Copley Students are National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

seniors Jessica Alexander, Denny Check, Nicholas Geisendorfer, Carrie Goldstein, David Hu and Jason Makishi join an elite group of 16,000 high school seniors who are semifinalists in the 57th annual National Merit Scholarship program.  The students may go on to compete for approximately 8,300 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $34 million to be offered in the spring of 2012. 

Students entered the competition by taking the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of entrants.  Students taking the test represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors. The semifinalists are the highest-scoring program entrants in each state, and they are the only participants who have an opportunity to continue in the competition for Merit Scholarship awards to be offered in the spring of 2012.

Semifinalists also must fulfill additional requirements, including maintaining an outstanding academic record and being endorsed and recommended by the high school principal, and earning SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier test performance. Finalists compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2500 Scholarships.

Winners will be announced April through July.