Congrats to the 29 Durham Academy seniors who were recently recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation as semifinalists or commended students in the 67th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.
Eight DA seniors were named semifinalists, including:
- Mukta Dharmapurikar
- Haley Fogg
- PJ Gillispie
- Aidan Hunter
- Mirella Kades
- Stacey Kang
- Sarah Ridley
- Caroline Sun
In addition, 21 DA seniors were recognized as commended students, including:
- Aadesh Anchaliya
- Amrit Bhutani
- Ben Browner
- Reed Burkert
- Asia Crowley
- Sassan Fahim
- Emily Gao
- Baylor Goldthwaite
- Aamer Husain
- Claire McGovern
- Tyler Powers
- Edward Rogers
- Sarah Shi
- Tate Staples
- Chaz Strickland
- Jet Tanaka
- Meghan Tarpey
- Anna Templeton
- Page Tsirigotis
- Nathan Wang
- Aaliyah Wines
Both semifinalists and commended students were selected by virtue of their performance on the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
Of this year’s approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 90% are expected to advance to the finalist level and will be notified of that designation in February. About half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, with notifications beginning in April and concluding in July. An estimated 7,500 National Merit Scholarships, worth nearly $30 million, will be offered in spring 2022.