Local National Merit semi-finalists announced

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

By Eleanor Chute, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. today announced about 16,000 semi-finalists in the National Merit Scholarship competition.

The high school seniors will compete for about 8,200 National Merit Scholarships, worth a total of more than $35 million.

The semi-finalists were chosen based on their performance on the PSAT/NMSQT exam, taken by 1.5 million high school juniors in more than 21,000 high schools last school year. The number of winners is proportional to each state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

In the next step, about 90 percent will become finalists based on applications, including their academic records, recommendation from a high school principal and SAT scores that are consistent with their PSAT performance.

Here is a list of winners at schools in the region:

Allegheny County

Bethel Park: Mary Barr and Ryan Germann

Chartiers Valley: Jeffrey Yeh

Deer Lakes: Karen Cheung

Elizabeth Forward: BreAnne DeMarco

The Ellis School: Heather Acuff, Naomi Gunawardena, Chao Long, Margaret Schervish, Xiaoyue Zhang and Hannah Zin

Fox Chapel Area: Tudor Achim, Mazdak Bradberry, Emily Feenstra, Madelyn Glymour, Lara Graham, William Hagberg, Carol Lin, Patrick Ross, Praveen Tummalapalli, Leslie Weaver and Andrew Zinn

Gateway: Martin Culig and Mohamed Koubaa

Hampton: Wendy Li

Highlands: Colleen Friel

Hillel Academy: Yaakov Saxon

Montour: Matthew Dukewich

Moon Area: Ling-Ling Lee and Ankit Medhekar

Mt. Lebanon: Megan Bone, Kishore Jayakumar, Alyssa Lloyd, Anne McGinty, John McGinty, Michael Muehl, Danielle Nathanson and Ryan Pollock

North Allegheny: Arundhati Bharati, Stacey Chen, Mike Heckmann, Andrew Ho, Emily Li, Kevin Liu, Katherine Luo, Dakota McCoy, Elaine Oestreich, Michael R. Sinko, Nimish Telang, Joseph Whitmore and Kristen Yealy

Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, Coraopolis: Alexis Jabour and Edward Quigley.

North Hills: Michael Marsh and Michael Vlah

Penn Hills: Gabriel Torres

Pine-Richland: Mark Beatty

Pittsburgh Allderdice: Molly Brean, Catherine Cobetto, Matthew Cummings, Sam Gutkind, Zara Koong-Karuman, Eric Levine, Joshua Safyan and Miriam Shiffman

Pittsburgh CAPA: Jeremy Malvin

Pittsburgh Central Catholic: Zachary Bluedorn, Kevin Connolly, Walter Holohan, Joseph Levri and Brendan Sullivan

Plum: Jeremy Mason

Quaker Valley: Colin Fadzen, Katherine Hoptay and Elizabeth O'Reilly.

Sewickley Academy: Moises Arriaga, John Billings, Lauren Bonomo, Eugenia Luo, Sarah McCormick, James Nocita, Thomas Norton and Nalyn Sriwattanakomen

Shady Side Academy: Brooke Gladstone, Joshua Kalla and Kevin Lemon

Shaler Area: Victoria Steger

Trinity Christian: Samuel Bray

Upper St. Clair: Matthew Boyas, Jennifer Cipullo, Andrew Gallagher, Matthew Myron, Mathi Rengasamy, Joseph Rubino and John Subosits

Vincentian Academy: Benjamin Hauser

West Allegheny: Kenechukwu Okoye

Wilson Christian Academy: Benjamin Altomari

Winchester Thurston: Katharine Vidt

Woodland Hills: Matthew Stoffregen

Beaver County

Beaver County Christian School: Ian Taylor and Kayla Welch

Blackhawk: Adam Mihalcin and Benjamin Rakestraw