Eight HHS seniors – Estelle Bayer, Matthew Carter, Samuel Greenwald, Simran Mishra, Robert Peng, Katherine Swenson, Benjamin Vaaler, and Gannon Youakim – have been chosen as National Merit scholarship finalists.

Since 1955, the National Merit Scholarship Program has been an academic competition that recognizes students who excelled in taking the Preliminary SAT (SAT) or National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT). Of the 1.5 millions students who take these tests, around 16,000 of them are chosen as semifinalists in Sept. of the following year. In Feb., students are notified if they have been chosen as finalists.

Merit Scholarship awards are given to students chosen among the finalists based on their abilities, skills, and accomplishments. Between the months of March and June, around 7,600 finalists are notified that they’ve received a Merit Scholarship award.

This is the most semifinalists and finalists HHS has had since at least 2010.