Winchester Thurston is proud to announce that seven students have been named Semifinalists by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) based on their performance on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®). Summer Devlin, Noa Jett, Emma Lee, Manasa Melachuri, Lucas Rosenblatt, Maia Rosenfeld, and Jonathan VanBriesen were each honored with this distinction, representing 12% of the senior class, a record-setting number of WT students to achieve at this level.

About 1.4 million students in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2015 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the PSAT/NMSQT. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million that will be offered next spring.

In addition to the seven students achieving Semifinalist status, eight students received a National Merit Commendation (Katherine Ashwood, David Friedman, Lindsay Gorby, Justin Hare, Nicholas Pearlman, Emma Place, Joshua Siktar, and Alexandra Uribe who was also honored in the National Historic Recognition Program), resulting in fully 25% of the senior class being recognized.

“We are tremendously proud of these students and their teachers. To have nearly one-fourth of our senior class score in the top 1-2% of the nation on the PSAT exam puts WT among the very best public and private schools in the nation,” said Head of School Gary Niels.