HISD Students among Semifinalists for National Merit Scholarship
Fifty-four seniors from six different HISD high schools are among the semifinalists for the National Merit Scholarship program. These students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for more than 8,000 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $34 million that will be offered next spring.
“We are extremely proud of these students and their academic accomplishments. To be selected as a semifinalist for this prestigious and highly competitive scholarship program is an honor,” said HISD Superintendent Terry Grier. “This goes to show our students are academically prepared to compete against students nationwide.”
To apply for this scholarship program, about 1.5 million high school juniors took the 2010 Preliminary SAT test. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, about 16,000 students, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
To become a finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by their principal, and earn high SAT scores to confirm the student’s earlier performance in the Preliminary SAT test.
The selected semifinalist students are from the following HISD high schools: Carnegie Vanguard High School, High School for the Performing and Visual Arts, Lamar High School, Westside High School, Debakey High School for Health Professions and Bellaire High School.
The 2012 National Merit Scholarship Winners will be announced starting in April 2012.
National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists
Carnegie Vanguard High School
Jonas A. Actor
Yihui Yang
High School for the Performing and Visual Arts
Nina E. Sandberg
Spencer Z. Shen
Lamar High School
Hayder Ali
Noah Morrison
Lavanya P. Sunder
Westside High School
Lenzi C. Daniel
Debakey High School for Health Professions
Muhammad A. Jalal
Adriana N. Pantazis
Victor S. Prieto
Van Tran
Teresa W. Tse
Jincy Varughese
Frederick D. Vu
Lawrence Y. Zhu
Bellaire High School
Olivia C Arena
Mark S. Bruce
Steven P. Chao
Brendan Chou
Evelyn E. Craigen
Erin A. DeLong
Dana M. Felberg
Connie L. Feng
Kevin T. George
Alexandra T. Gibner
Meghana Golla
Steven B. Hester
Weiting Ji
Amy W. Jiang
Sneha V. Joshi
Bo S. Kim
Jin S. Kim
Joseph S. Lewis
Carrie J. Li
Natalia I. Majewska
Janice G. Maliakkal
Denes Marton
Ankeet Mutha
Jack Ogden
Sarah L. Orsak
Kikelomo Otutuloro
Angeline A. Rodriguez
Mitchell A. Sawyer
Gil H. Shaulsky
Vincent P. Su
Regan Wang
David M. Williams
John C. Williams
Bethany S. Wong
Daniel A. Yun
Ni Zhan
Elizabeth R. Zhang
Zhongmin Zhang
The Houston Independent School District is the largest school district in Texas and the seventh-largest in the United States with 281 schools and more than 200,000 students. The 301-square-mile district is one of the largest employers in the Houston metropolitan area with nearly 30,000 employees.
For more information, visit the HISD Web site at www.houstonisd.org.