Southern Chester County Students Are Merit Scholar Semifinalists, 28 from 4 High Schools

KENNETT SQUARE, PA — Four southern Chester County high schools jointly had 28 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists named in September.

Unionville High School West had 21 semifinalists named, Avon Grove High School had four and Oxford Area High School had one semifinalist. Kennett High School had two semifinalists named.

The semifinalist list comes after high school juniors enter the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The nationwide pool of semifinalists represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors and includes 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.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student's earlier performance on the qualifying test.

From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.

The students who are National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, by their high schools are:

Unionville High School
Jack B. Blackadar
Chirag Choudhary
Alenka O. Doyle
Saanvi S. Garg
Emily T. Harper
Simon A. Hjaltason
Kriti Kalary
Jamie R. Keglovits
Andy Z. Li
Juliann B. Muntz
Aniruddh Mutnuru
Nandhini Parthasarathy
Ansh R. Patel
Ibraheem W. Qureshi
Michael J. Scali
Meera Sehgal
Arnab Sricar
Sivani Srinivasan
Brandon S. Tsai
Robert Wang
Emma X. Yin

Oxford Area High School
Emiliano C. Zetune

Avon Grove High School
Connor M. Bossong
Susan J. Deering
Noah M. Lennon
Alek M. Pochan

Kennett High School
Nina Gralewski-Goel
Mattias J. King

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