2 Chestnut Hill-Area Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

CHESTNUT HILL, PHILADELPHIA – Two Chestnut Hill-area students have been named semifinalists in the prestigious National Merit Scholarship Program, standing out among the roughly 1.8 million students who entered the program.

Springside Chestnut Hill Academy student Catherine Cooney and Crefeld School student Samuel I. Kamien worked hard enough stand out among the crowd and be named two of the 16,000 semifinalists.

About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2016 PSAT.

All semifinalists are eligible to receive 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth $33 million.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists represents less than 1 percent of high school seniors.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier performance on the PSAT.

From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to be named finalists. Three types of scholarship awards will be offered next year: National Merit $2,500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships.

Scholarship winners will be announced in spring 2018.

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