Three Seniors Named Semifinalists in 2010 National Achievement Scholarship Program

Finalists to be announced this spring

October 13, 2009 — Three Phillips Academy seniors have been designated semifinalists in the 46th annual National Achievement Scholarship Program. The three students are among 1,600 black American high school seniors selected from an original pool of 160,000 entrants for their exceptional performance on the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying test (PSAT/NMSQT).  The finalists, who will be named this spring, must demonstrate a record of high academic performance over the course of their high school career, as well as earn similarly high SAT scores.   There are approximately 800 Achievement Scholarship awards, worth some $2.6 million, to be offered in spring 2010.

Roughly 1,300 semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist level.  From the finalists, approximately 800 Achievement Scholar awardees will be chosen based on their abilities, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies. Every finalist will compete for one of the 700 National Achievement $2500 scholarships. One-hundred additional scholarships, which are underwritten by different corporate and business sponsors, will be awarded to students who meet criteria as designated by the grantors.

The three Phillips Academy semifinalists are:

• Audrey Adu-Appiah of Charlotte, N.C.
• Jessica Blake of Summit, N.J.
• Amanda Brisco of Houston

Twenty-Nine Seniors Named 2010 National Merit Semifinalists

Sept. 19, 2009

—The National Merit Scholarship Corporation of Evanston, Ill has announced the names of all semifinalists for the 55th annual National Merit Scholarship program. Twenty-nine Phillips Academy students were on the list, making them eligible to go to the next stage of the competition for 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth $36 million.

Finalists will be announced in the spring. Approximately 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to reach the finalist level, and half of these will likely be selected as Merit Scholarship winners, earning the Merit Scholar title, and the $2,500 scholarship.

More than 1.5 million juniors in nearly 22,000 high schools entered the 2010 National Merit Program by taking the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

The Phillips Academy students, all class of 2010, named semifinalists are Sebastian Becker (New York), Ric Best (Winnetka, Ill.), Zahra Bhaiwala (Andover, Mass.), Krishnan Chandra (Andover, Mass.), Bobby Chen (Newton, Mass.), Rainer Crosett (North Andover, Mass.), Anna Fang (Watertown, Mass.), Valeria Fedyk (Phoenix), Whitney Ford (New York), Timothy Ghosh (Rochester, N.Y.), Thomas Harrington (Boulder, Colo.), Julie Helmers (Andover, Mass.), Andrew Hong (Seoul, Korea), Sophia Jia (Beijing), Ashleigh Jones (Greenwich, Conn.), Lauren King (Belgrade, Mont.), Andrew Li (Belle Mead, N.J.), Annie Li (Forest Hills, N.Y.), Randy Li (Canton, Mich.), Jonathan Liu (East Brunswick, N.J.), Juliet Liu (Tallahassee, Fla.), Ryan McKinnon (Andover, Mass.), Laura Mitchell (West Jefferson, N.C.), Anjali Narayan-Chen (Coppell, Texas), Chien Yi Png (Singapore), F. Dylan Rhodes (Winter Park, Fla.), Jacob Romanow (Brookline, Mass.), Nikita Saxena (New Providence, N.J.), and Jane Thomas (Saratoga, Calif.)