Twelve students named National Merit Scholarship Finalists

[February 2010] Twelve students from the Plymouth-Canton Educational Park were named National Merit Scholarship Program Finalists this week.

The students, Canton High School seniors Lillian Chen, James Keena, Nicholas Wasylyshyn, Linda Yang, Plymouth High School seniors Sijia Hao, Rebecca Kiefer, Shan Kothari, Amy Mathew and Salem High School seniors Akshay Amin, John Krutty, Alexandria McHugh and Jason Yu rank in the top one percent of their peers across the nation.

The National Merit Scholarship Program has named approximately 16,000 academically talented high school seniors as finalists. These seniors now have an opportunity to advance in the competition for 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards (about $32 million) to be offered next month. Students entered the National Merit and Achievement competitions by taking the 2009 PSAT/NMSQT. Students must fulfill several requirements to become a Finalist--record of very high academic performance in college prep course work, SAT scores that confirm the PSAT/NMSQT performance, detailed scholarship information about extracurricular activities and leadership positions, self-descriptive essays and full endorsement of the high school principal.