Schools
Dozens of Poway Unified Seniors Named National Merit Semifinalists
The students will compete for about 8,300 scholarships worth more than a total of $32 million.
By Nicole Mooradian
Dozens of Rancho Bernardo-area seniors in the Poway Unified School District have been named 2013 National Merit Semifinalists, the nonprofit National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced Wednesday in a news release.
The students are among about 16,000 semifinalists nationally in the 59th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.
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The students will compete for about 8,300 scholarships worth more than a total of $32 million. About 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to make it to the finals; just more than half of the finalists will win a scholarship.
The students will be judged by their scores on standardized tests, their grades, an essay and extracurricular activities.
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Semifinalists were determined by their scores on the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which they took as 11th graders. Only those who scored in the top 1 percent of their state were named semifinalists.
About 1.5 million high school juniors took the PSAT/NMSQT last year.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation was established in 1955 to conduct the National Merit Scholarship Program, according to a news release from the nonprofit organization. The scholarships are provided by the organization and about 440 businesses and educational institutions.
Del Norte High School
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Mount Carmel High School
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- Jenny Li
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Rancho Bernardo High School
- Grace A. Chen
- Ben Cohen
- Jessica Fang
- Jeffrey Lam
- William Lu
- Nathan Ng
- Sathya Ramesh
- Scott Taylor
- Katie Xu
Westview High School
- Isha Baga
- Bingfei Cao
- Taylor Chan
- Alexander Chang
- Alicia Chen
- Justin Chiang
- Patrick Chin
- Brenton Chu
- Katherine Erickson
- Kevin Fan
- Brandon Huang
- Charles Huang
- Kathryn Kang
- Balachandar Kesavan
- Aseem Keyal
- Medeeha Khan
- Charles Lu
- Hao Luo
- Rahul Malavalli
- Anuraag Nalluri
- Briana Niu
- David Niu
- Rachel Petrie
- Siddhi Ramesh
- Cameron Ramos
- Joshua Shanes
- Ashwinlal Sreelal
- Brendan Tang
- Hannah Tang
- Amanda Tjitro
- James Wang
- Emily Yang
- Jacob Zemper
—City News Service and Patch Field Editor Shauntel Lowe contributed to this report.
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