Four Kirkland students named as National Merit Semifinalists

Published 3:30 pm Wednesday, September 10, 2014

The Lake Washington School District (LWSD) has 28 high school seniors who qualified as semifinalists in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, as announced Sept. 10 by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Four of those seniors are from Kirkland including Garek Chwojko-Frank and Emily Peterson of Juanita High School, Roland Munsil of Lake Washington High School and Jeremy Harrison of Tesla STEM High School.

A total of 16,000 academically talented high school seniors nationwide have qualified. About 90 percent of these semifinalists are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and more than half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title. These students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $33 million that will be offered next spring.

Students qualified for these awards by completing the 2013 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.