4 Scotch Plains Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

SCOTCH PLAINS-FANWOOD, NJ — Four high school students attending schools in Scotch Plains have been named National Merit semifinalists.

High school student Dylan Fei is the only semifinalist from Scotch Plains-Fanwood High School. This achievement is the first step in the process for receiving a scholarship.

“Congratulations to Dylan for making it to Merit Scholar semi-finalist,” said Superintendent Joan Mast, Ed.D. “We are proud of his commitment to excellence, and the teachers and staff that prepared him will be cheering him on throughout the process.”

Alexis Kern from the Academy for Allied Health Sciences, as well as Audrey Thompson and Youhao Wang from Union County Magnet High School, have also been named as semifinalists.

The next round of the Merit Scholarship Program will be announced in the winter, and throughout the spring chosen finalists will receive a scholarship award of $2,500 or a corporate-sponsored or college-sponsored award of varying amounts.

High school juniors entered the National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, included the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

The winners will be chosen from the pool of finalists based on their abilities, skills and accomplishments, with a variety of information being evaluated, including academic record, information about the school’s curriculum and grading system, PSAT/NMSQT Selection Index score, the high school official’s written recommendation, information about the student’s activities and leadership and the finalist’s own essay.