(above, l-r) WHRHS Principal William J. Librera, center, congratulates the school’s four Class of 2020 National Merit Finalists: Jessica Young, Dave Ki, Vivian Zhang, and Phillip Ding.
WHRHS National Merit Finalists
Submitted by Denis Kelly
All four Watchung Hills Regional High School (WHRHS) students, who in September were named National Merit Semi-Finalists, have now qualified as 2020 Finalists. This year’s WHRHS National Merit Finalists are: Phillip Ding, Dave Ki, Jessica Young and Vivian Zhang.
“Congratulations to Phillip, Dave, Jessica and Vivian, and to their families and teachers for this important and well-deserved honor,” said WHRHS Principal William J. Librera. “Students who receive this distinction have a chance to compete for scholarship prizes. Phillip, Dave, Jessica, and Vivian have outstanding academic records, participate in diverse school and community activities, demonstrate leadership ability and inspire their classmates and teachers.”
Being considered for this year’s National Merit designation is initially based on scores by more than 1.5 million students who sat for the 2018 PSAT (Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test)/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT).
WHRHS’S four National Merit Semifinalists this year had been the latest of the 52 WHRHS students who had qualified as National Merit Semifinalists during the most recent six school years. The year-to-year totals have been: Class of 2015 – 11; Class of 2016 – 6; Class of 2017 –10; Class of 2018 – 15; Class of 2019 – 6; and Class of 2020 – 4.
Many, although not necessarily all, of the semifinalists tend to go onto to qualify as finalists. This is the second year in a row when all of the WHRHS Semifinalists went on to be named Finalists.
Every year, in addition to the naming of the Semifinalists and Finalists, National Merit also names a list of commended students. This year’s WHRHS students named to the 2020 Commended List, which is the category immediately following Semifinalist, are: Laura Baeyens, Jagdeep Bhatia, Catherine Cai, Nyna Chacko, Tina Chen, Tamara Hadzic, Jenna Hansen, Nicole Harris, Roopa Irakam, Niharika Iyer, Apurva Joshi, Stephanie Ju, Abigail Kotar, Sana Mamtaney, Aaron Marmolejos, Manthan Naik, James Narayanan, Annabell Pu, Julia Rubin, Cristina Sarrico, Julia M. Schink, Mayur Sharma, Katie Tan, Sarah Young, Maya Zhang, and Kevin Zu.
Photo by WHRHS
