20 Hockaday Students Named National Merit Semifinalists
Twenty Hockaday students will advance as semifinalists in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, a national academic competition for recognition and scholarship that began in 1955.
Hockaday semifinalists include Ashna Ahuja, Sara Aldis, Michelle Chen, Sophie Dawson, Michelle Chen, Shivani Ganesh, JoJo Gum, Meghna Jain, Sophia Kim, Tanvi Kongara, Chaucer Langbert, Tosca Langbert, Isabel Peppard, Helena Perez-Stark, Nisha Singh, Eloise Sinwell, Qianqian (Caroline) Subbiah, Emma Unglaub, Elaine Williams, Christina Yang, and Isabella Yepes.
School officials say the students have worked tirelessly to take every advantage offered by the educational opportunities at Hockaday and are lauded for their commitment to academic excellence.
These students were chosen from approximately 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. This year, more than 16,000 semifinalists have been named in the United States, and these individuals now have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarship awards, worth approximately $32 million.
To be considered for the finalist designation, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout upper school, be endorsed and recommended by an upper school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm their prior performance on the qualifying test.
The National Merit Scholarship recipients will be announced in April 2019, and these scholarship recipients will join more than 330,000 other distinguished individuals who have earned the Merit Scholar title.
