Rockwood Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

ST. LOUIS, OCTOBER 1, 2003 -- Seventeen Rockwood students have been selected as finalists for the 49th Annual National Merit Scholarship Program.  They are Hasan Akbari and Stephen Huggard of Eureka High School; Lance Cai, Jenna Fernsler, Mallory Hicks, Dan Porter, Melissa Subramanian and Mathew Towerman of Marquette High School in Chesterfield; and Lauren Auld, Shannon Petry, Andrew Bartelsmeyer, Ellen East, Catherine Finneran, Lauren Krebs, Sonya Li, Ross Mercer and Heather Nelson of Lafayette High School in Wildwood.

As semifinalists, the students will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for the approximately 8,000 Merit Scholarship awards that will be announced next spring. In order to advance to finalist standing - a prerequisite to being considered for a Merit Scholarship award * each semifinalist must have a record of very high academic performance, be endorsed and recommended by their school principal and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance.

More than 1.3 million juniors in over 21,000 U.S. high schools entered the 2004 National Merit Program by taking the 2003 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, is made up of the highest scoring entrants in each state.