10 Students From New Hyde Park Area Named National Merit Semifinalists

Ten seniors from the New Hyde Park area are among 16,000 students across the country who have been named semifinalists in the 63rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seven Herricks High School students, two New Hyde Park Memorial High School students and one home-schooled student received this honor.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation made the announcement on Wednesday.

Congrats to the semifinalists:

Homeschool

• Pranuthi C. Gadde

Herricks High School

• Aashna Brahmbhatt
• Caitlin Chou
• Nicole J. Garcia
• Jonathan Lum
• Nicolas S. Ryan
• Brian Y. Yang
• Andrea M. Yeung

New Hyde Park Memorial High School

• Aashish John
• Saumya Sharma

These high school seniors will move on through the competition to possibly earn 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $32 million that will be handed out next spring.

To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition.

About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program and were screened based on their 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scores.

These semifinalists represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors. About 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist level. Merit Scholars will be announced in February.

File photo