Newtown High School Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Newtown High School seniors, Michael Arena and Bryan Igwersen have beeem named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists!

Today officials of National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced the names of approximately 16,000 Semifinalists in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Among them are Newtown High School seniors, Michael Arena and Bryan Igwersen.

All of the academically talented high school seniors named semifinalists have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million that will be offered next spring. To be considered for a Merit Scholarship® award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition.

According to the National Merit Scholarship Program, more than 1.6 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. 

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2019 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join some 338,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.