The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced 20 semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program from Evanston Township High School, Beacon Academy and Roycemore School last week. Sixteen of the semifinalists go to ETHS, up from last year’s six semifinalists.
The semifinalists at ETHS are Hershel Abraham, Una Breen, Eli Coustan, Cameron Eaton-Strong, Daniel Green, Maxwell Matsis, Daniel O’Connor, Isaac Peng, Katherine Schober, Leah Shaman, Harrison Stracks, Patrick Tu, Philippa Walker, Andrew Watson, William Zalmezak and Kathryn Zehr.
The semifinalists at Beacon Academy are Lillian Pollack, Aidan Scheidt and Leo Smith. The semifinalist at Roycemore School is Marko Maruszewski.
“These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring,” says the program’s press release.
Students enter the scholarship program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
“The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing 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,” the program says.
Around 15,000 of the 16,000 semifinalists are named finalists, but must submit an application to be considered. Roughly half the finalists will receive college scholarships.
Evanston’s number of qualifying students varies. According to ETHS archived press releases, the school had nine semifinalists in 2023, 15 in 2022, eight in 2021, seven in 2020 and 11 in 2019.
Finalists will be notified of their status in February.
Here are the 20 Evanston high school students who are National Merit semifinalists is from Evanston RoundTable, Evanston's most trusted source for unbiased, in-depth journalism.