Waukee Seniors Earn Recognition in National Merit Scholarship Program

The names of 16,000 semifinalists in the 57^th annual National Merit Scholarship Program were announced this week with two Waukee seniors in the mix.

seniors Kyle Cutler and Bailey McClurg were both chosen to continue in the 2012 competition for the 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $34 million to be awarded next spring.

Cutler and McClurg must fulfill additional requirements to advance to the finals in the competition. They were just two of about 1.5 million juniors who entered the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program.

“I’ll be honest, it’s not something I take any kind of credit for,” said Waukee High School principal Kirk Johnson. “We have phenomenal students and a phenomenal staff and one of the most important things is to have a good teacher in the classroom. When you have good teachers working with these kids, these are the sorts of things that happen.”

In addition to the two semifinalists from Waukee High School, four other seniors were given letters of commendation from the National Merit Scholarship Program. Carter Bell, Brian Dannenmueller, Joshua James and Tucker Melvin will receive recognition for exceptional academic performance. They will not continue on in the competition.

Students recognized in the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program were chosen based on the results of the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The 1.5 million participants came from more than 22,000 high schools across the country.