National Merit Semi-Finalists announced

Elena Lee, Reporter
October 22, 2018

Pictured in the first row: National Merit Semi-Finalists Levent Batakci, Smitha Ramesh, Madeline Barto, JT Mullins, and Tuan Bui. Pictured in the back: DTSD Superintendent Joe McFarland, Camille Heck, John Zhuang, Jakob Nickels, Maxwell Potter, Anton Aluquin, Maheen Ibrahimi, Desirae Chandran, and HHS principal Jeffery Smith. The five semi-finalist will find out if they qualified for the finals in the spring of 2019.

Five Hershey High School seniors discovered that they had qualified for the National Merit Scholarship on September 12, 2018.

The five HHS seniors who have qualified from the semi-finals are Madeline Barto, Levent Batakci, Tuan Bui, JT Mullins, and Smitha Ramesh.  

PSAT scores from 2017 served as the screen for determining which 16,000 students would be selected to be semi-finalists. These students are selected out of a pool of around 1.6 million students within the United States, with the selections based on academic performance throughout high school as well as the student’s PSAT/SAT scores.

“Hershey aims to offer every student equal opportunities in education,” said HHS principal Jeff Smith. Hershey offers a wide variety of classes based on interest and academic level, as well as preparatory classes for standardized tests, such as the SAT or the ACT. Qualifying finalists for the program will be announced in the Spring of 2019.