National Merit Semifinalist and Related Honors Announced

Twenty seniors from Spring Branch ISD high schools were named recently as National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalists or National Hispanic Recognition Program student award recipients. These district students rank among the nation’s best young minds.

Many students were honored Oct. 24 during the regular monthly meeting of the SBISD Board of Trustees. Thirteen students from Memorial and Stratford high schools were named as National Merit Semifinalists earlier this fall.

Memorial High has 11 students honored with this national recognition. They include Richard Anderson, William Caesar, Connor Callahan, Joshua Glass, Trent Herndon, Tiger Im, Davis Kirchhofer, Runlin Liu, Lan Nguyen, Mark Oldham and Frank Yang. 

At Stratford High, this year’s National Merit Semifinalists are Caleb Ginn and Heream Yang.

Students become eligible for the national scholarship program when they take the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors. Semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of the high school graduating class in Texas and rank as the nation’s highest scoring test takers. These Semifinalists now have an opportunity to qualify for National Merit Finalist awards, which will be announced in spring 2017.

Seven SBISD students were named finalists in the annual National Hispanic Recognition program. These students, also known as National Hispanic Scholars, include Memorial High’s Miguel Caranti, Carson De La Rosa and Kate Sparenberg.

At Stratford High, the National Hispanic Scholars this year are Jordan Meza and Alec Milazzo. Westchester Academy for International Studies also has two finalists in this category. They are Roldan Santiago Moreno-Duarte and Paloma June.

To earn this highly regarded recognition, students must be at least one-quarter of Hispanic/Latino descent, attain a high performance level on the PSAT, and have a GPA of 3.0 or higher at the end of their junior year. Each year, up to 5,000 students nationally earn this recognition.

In addition, more than 30,000 students nationally are designated each year for National Merit Program Commended recognition for high scores on the PSAT/NMSQT. They earn the recognition for Selection Index qualifying scores, which may vary each year. Generally, these students score within the 96 percentile of all college bound juniors across the nation.

Memorial High School this year is home to 31 National Merit Program Commended students. They include Brett Bays, Alexis Bennett, Audrey Beyer, Elizabeth Bik, Baily Black, Austin Bopp, George Chirapurath, William Choi, Margaret Coulter, Daniel Fonseka, Connor Hanna, Max Hardy, Vincent Huang, Benjamin Hughes, Rebecca Kroger, Samuel Kroger, Claire Miller, Joanna Moy, Fischer Nordin, Davis Palmie, Jihwan Park, Juliette Pferdehirt, Maya Prakash, Tucker Reinhardt, Andrew Su, Luke Tesarek, Annie Titterington, Robert Trout, Grace Winburne and Liyun Xu.

Eight seniors at Stratford High have been named National Merit Commended students. They are Kyle Brastrom, Joshua Chan, Caroline Crawford, Mark Duna, Matthew Hopper, Jordan Meza, Alec Norman and Juwon Yoo.

At Westchester Academy for International Studies, senior Rachel Connelly also won National Merit Commended recognition this year.