4 Altamont seniors named National Merit semifinalists

Altamont School seniors Shawn Goyal, Sameer Sultan, Ahad Bashir and Wilson Tynes were announced as semifinalists in the 65th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

They join approximately 16,000 other high school seniors in receiving this honor. Over 1.6 million juniors in about 22,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as the initial screen of program entrants.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

These academically talented students 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.

For more information about the National Merit Scholarship Program, please visit nationalmerit.org.

Submitted by Julie Beckwith.