Students who take the PSAT/NSMSQT exam in their junior year are eligible to enter the National Merit Scholarship Program. Those who score very highly for their state will be admitted to the program. Through the program, students may be awarded scholarships or recognition. To compete, students must be enrolled in a high school in the US or US territory and take the PSAT during their third year of high school.
Around 16,000 students in the nation are recognized as semi-finalists. Seven McNeil seniors were recognized as semi-finalists in the program for their performance on their junior year exam scores.
The students recognized were Noah Higgins, Christopher Ho, Ethan Huang, Karthik Jayakumar, Brian Lee, Michael Li and Yu En Lin.
Ho’s sister was a National Merit qualifier before him so he was familiar with the award and was looking at the semi6finals list before he was awarded.
“I was excited,” Ho said. “I wasn’t sure [if I would get the award] because I was right on the border of the cutoff for it so I was pretty excited [when] I got it.”
Noah Higgins was encouraged by his mom to get the award. He received some SAT books from her and took a couple of practice tests to prepare for the PSAT.
“I was pretty happy about the score that I got on the PSAT,” Higgins said. ”I thought that was about the best that I could have gotten so that was nice.”
After finding out he was a semi-finalist, Ethan Huang was happily surprised.
“I knew [the award] was achievable but, I was just hoping to do well on the test itself,” Huang said. “It wasn’t something I’ve been thinking about since freshman year. I just knew it was a thing and I [thought] ‘I’ll try to get it.’”
After doing well on PSATs in the past, Yuen Lin was not particularly surprised to become a semi-finalist for the National Merit Program.
“I already knew about the award before so I looked up the cutoff for the semi-finalist,” Lin said. “As soon as my PSAT scores came out I [thought] ‘Oh I’ll probably get this award’ so I wasn’t that shocked I was just like ‘Oh I did get that award.’”
To prepare for the PSAT, Brian Lee used several textbooks for a few years before the exam.
“I was trying to get [the award],” Lee said. ”I was very happy with how well I did. I didn’t expect to score [as] high [as I did].”
These seven students have the chance to become finalists in the program. If they reach this round, they may be commended as merit scholarship winners. These students may receive National Merit $2500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships or college-sponsored scholarships.
