All 10 National Merit Semifinalists from the Lenape Regional High School District have advanced as finalists through the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program.
The students remain in competition for National Merit-sponsored, corporate-sponsored and college-sponsored scholarship money.
“As a district, we celebrate each of these students for their extraordinary individual achievements, and we also celebrate them as a group, because this is the largest class of National Merit Finalists in our history,” LRHSD Superintendent Carol Birnbohm said. “I could not be more proud of our bright, hard-working students, in addition to the teachers, administrators and staff members who support them.”
LRHSD National Merit Finalists include Cherokee High School’s Ian Aquino, Ryan Fanelli, Matthew Goffin, Palak Jain and Zhudi Pan, Shawnee High School’s Joshua Atwater and Gina Chryssofos and Lenape High School’s Liam Anthony, Shivank Joshi and Jimmy Li.
To be considered as a finalist, these students needed to be endorsed and recommended by an official from their high school and were required to submit a detailed application, in which they provided information about participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.
According to officials, all ten have extensive resumes that feature academic and extracurricular awards and leadership roles.
Officials say more than 1.6 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.
The nationwide pool of National Merit Finalists, comprised of about 15,000 students, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.
All Finalists now compete for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million. The winners will be notified in the spring.
