Shoreline has five National Merit Semifinalists

Photo of Shorewood 2011 National Merit Semifinalists with Principal Bill Dunbar

From left to right: Jessica Van Horne, Nate Matthews, Principal Bill Dunbar, Tori Lewis, Matt Delaney. Photo courtesy Shoreline Schools

Five Shoreline School District seniors have qualified as National Merit Semifinalists: Alec Wagner from Shorecrest High School, and Matt Delaney, Tori Lewis, Nate Matthews and Jessica Van Horne from Shorewood High School.

These students have the opportunity to compete for Merit Scholarship awards by qualifying as a National Merit Finalist. About 16,000 seniors nationwide will be competing for some 8,200 Merit Scholarships.

More than 1.4 million juniors in nearly 21,000 high schools entered the 2011 National Merit Program by taking the 2009 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, 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.

To become a Finalist, a Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying test performance. 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.