12 Vestavia Hills High Schools Students Named National Merit Semifinalist

VESTAVIA HILLS, AL — Some of Vestavia Hills High School's finest can be found on list of semifinalists released Wednesday by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Twelve VHHS students were chosen out of the nearly 1.6 million high school juniors who took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the highest number of semifinalists of any school in the state.

The VHHS semifinalists were Richard Fu, Nelson Mills, Robert Smith, Joshua Gray, Jacob Reiber, Macy McClurg, Yihan Zhong, Ginger Llivina, Sarah Zhao, Sidhvi Reddy, Chandler Clemmons, and Nicolas Aldana.

In order to qualify, semifinalists have to fall in the top-scoring percentile for their state.

According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, less than 1 percent of participants qualify as semifinalists. This year, 16,000 students across the country were named semifinalists, and 221 of those came from Alabama.

Finalists will be announced at the beginning of 2018, and will be eligible for more than $32 million in scholarships, according to the NMSC.

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