Fox Chapel Area students named 2022 National Merit semifinalists/commended students

Nine Fox Chapel Area High School seniors have been designated as National Merit semifinalists and 13 have been named commended students in the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program. The program is conducted by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC).

The semifinalists from Fox Chapel Area are Noah Bradley, Zhiyi Chen, Shea Davison, Russell Fenton, Anna Ferris, Claire Hamilton, Janise Kim, Zoe Lakkis and Nathaniel Mueller.

The district’s commended students are Patrick Alexander, Andrew Byersdorfer, Justine Eng, Cara Felman, Maia Gravina, Thomas Healy, Owen Hershey, Uma Muzumdar, Emma Szymanski, Shrivardhan Thada, James Trageser, Eduardo Weissmann and Siddharth Yende.

The students were selected based on their 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) scores. More than one million juniors complete the PSAT/NMSQT each year and are automatically entered in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Approximately 16,000 advance to become semifinalists and about 34,000 are commended. The semifinalists represent less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors. Commended students represent the top five percent.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. The commended students are recognized for their exceptional academic promise.

The semifinalists now can to advance to the finalist level and compete for about 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $30 million. The scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2022.