Eight M-A students are National Merit Scholarship semifinalists

There are eight 2015 National Merit Scholarship (NMS) Award semifinalists from Menlo-Atherton High School. They are seniors Matthew Baszucki, Ryan Cole, Alexander Iyer, Christopher Jarrett, Healey Montague-Alamin, Nathan Orttung, Erin Perrine, and Katherine Webb.

Every year, 16,000 students all over the U.S. are selected as semifinalists for NMS based on their performance on the Preliminary SAT (PSAT) taken in the fall of their junior year. In order to qualify as a semifinalist, test-takers must score in the top first percentile of their state. All states have different cutoff scores that change every year; California’s 2015 cutoff is a 222, the third highest in the nation.

In order to qualify as finalists, the semifinalists must fulfill several requirements, such as completing the NMS application and taking the SAT to “validate” their PSAT score. The finalists will be notified in February 2015.

Winners of NMS will be chosen “based on their abilities, skills, and accomplishments”. The available scholarships include $2,500 scholarships funded by the NMS Corporation, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships. NMS winners will be notified from March through June 2015.

Photo from left (clockwise): Christopher Jarrett, Ryan Cole, Nathan Orttung, Matthew Bazsucki, Alexander Iyer, Katherine Webb, Erin Perrine, Healey Montague-Alamin

Photo by Karina Escobar-Weaver

This article originally appeared in M-A Bear News: used with permission