By Brian Li ’20 and Jackson Coleman ’20

Scott Bowman, Adam Tropper, and Neil Sehgal are University School’s three semifinalists for the National Merit Scholar Program, a program sponsored by the National Merit Scholar Corporation (NMSC). These three students were selected due to their high scores on the PSAT. In February of 2017 the NMSC will decide whether or not they are designated as finalists.

The National Merit Scholar Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships, and began in 1955. Qualification into the program is determined by the PSAT, taken junior year. Neil Sehgal, a semifinalist in the program stated: “Achieving a certain score designates you as either commended, which is like the third tier, or as a semifinalist, which is like the second tier.” Semifinalists then must submit an application to get to the third stage and become a finalist. Adam Tropper stated that the application is “largely similar to your college applications, but it is much more simple to fill out. The amount of supplemental information that you need to give is significantly less. So essentially what you do is you write a 400 or so word essay and then you tell them some biographical information.”

There are advantages to being a National Merit Scholar. Neil stated: “It looks good on your college application because colleges like to have a certain number of their class be semifinalists.” He also added: “if you get to become a finalist you get a couple thousand dollars. Those are the main two benefits.” Also, Neil further mentions: “Bragging rights.”

University School also had 12 commended students. They are Gabriel Cohen, Herbert Crowther, Rohan Garg, Andrew Gilmore, Adam Gurary, Joshua Hunter, Charles (Ryan) O’Malley, Jackson Polish, Arjun Ramachandran, Dante Sudilovsky, Brandon Wang, and Peter Zukerman. Congratulations to all of University School’s commended students, and also to its semifinalists. Good luck to the semifinalists and best of luck to them on becoming finalists in the program.