News Staff Reporter
September 13th, the National Merit Corporation released the names of thirteen Choate seniors who qualified as semifinalists in the 2007 National Merit Scholarship Program competition. They were Kelsey Cameron, John Cao, David Carroll, Ben Gettinger, Sooihn Kang, Karthik Kasaraneni, Sabrina Lazarus, Dan Montana, Jeff Rosen, Bailee Sims, Creighton Stevenson, John Tiholiz, and Channing Tookes.
The National Merit Scholarship program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. Each year, students must take the Preliminary SAT (PSAT), also known as the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT), in order to participate in the competition.
There are around 16,000 semi-finalists named every year. The public school system of each state is awarded a percentage of the total number of semifinalists equivalent to the percentage of the nationwide high school population that attends school in the state. Choate, however, is not part of the Connecticut pool of test-takers or semifinalists, but rather is a part of Boarding Selection Unit 1. This region is comprised of 118 independent schools in Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Virginia.
To become a semifinalist, Choate students must score equal to or higher than the highest selection index among the states in Boarding Selection Unit 1, making it more difficult to qualify than for an average Connecticut student. This year, Massachusetts had the highest average selection index in the region, a total of 224 out of a possible 240. Of the 6,025 students who participate in this competition in Unit 1, 133 were selected as semifinalists. Choate had around 10% of these semi-finalists.
Last year, Choate had 10 students recognized as semi-finalists and 10 students the year before that.
In February the 13 Choate semifinalists will find out whether they have advanced to finalist standing and will later find out whether they have received National Merit Scholarships, corporate-sponsored merit scholarships, or college-sponsored merit scholarships.
According to the Choate College Counseling Office, the recognition will not help much in the college process.
“Since it is mostly based just on testing, and only the PSATs, it doesn’t offer a lot of information to colleges that’s of real interest or use,” said Dean Jacoby, Director of College Counseling. He continued, “Colleges are more interested in seeing students’ other, more recent testing.”
Jacoby was very enthusiastic about the students’ achievements, though, and said, “Getting any type of national recognition is a wonderful thing and we are very proud of the Choate students who are recognized. If they get scholarship money for college, that is a fantastic thing in itself.”
