Out of the many years that CHS has taken the PSATs, this year has shown to have the most receivers of the exceptional National Merit award. The National Merit grants juniors who scored the highest on the PSATs with a scholarship of $2,500. Having the highest number of recipients this year, eight CHS students have been placed as semifinalists, including Eric Tran, Abraham Park, Elizabeth Wu, Shane Jung, Sanjar Junisbai, Simon Moore, Miriam Moore, and Eliza Welty. The national merit is an award for a scholarship based on the PSAT scores of juniors in high school. 16,000 of the highest scoring PSAT juniors in the nation are selected to be semifinalists. Each state has their own minimum qualifying score; since California has one of the highest being 1470 out of 1520, it is an honor that these students have made it as finalists.
The qualifiers submitted an application consisting of responses to essay questions. From there, 15,000 of the former students are selected as finalists. Then, 7,500 students get the scholarship for $2,500.
“It’s pretty cool that I have a chance to get $2,500, basically as a bonus,” Park said. “It’s definitely rewarding.”
An unprecented number of CHS students have recieved the honor of becoming a finalist. The contestants are all excited to receive the scholarship and are happy to see how much their efforts paid off in the end.
“I was very excited at first when the initial semifinalist were notified in September,” Tran said. “However the excitement has died down now after turning in the application [for finalist] and waiting for the various deadlines.”
It was not intentional for these contestants to receive such high scores for their PSAT, so they were very surprised with the results. It was the studying for the real SAT that proved to be effective for the PSAT. These semifinalists spent many hours in the summer and throughout the rest of the year studying for the SAT and have had a relaxing reassurance that this studying would lead to something bigger with the National Merit.
Along with the other few candidates for the National Merit from CHS, these hard working students are excited to be informed of their high performance on the test and possibly a scholarship for college. They are ready for many more tests and attending college after putting many hours into studying and definitely have a bright future ahead of them.
Along with the other few candidates for the National Merit from CHS, these hardworking students are excited to be informed of their high performance on the test and possibly a scholarship for college. They were ready for the SAT after putting many hours into studying and definitely have a bright future ahead of them.