30 ICCSD Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Officials of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) have announced the names of approximately 16,000 Semifinalists in the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. We are proud to announce that we have 30 Semifinalists from our District, with 8 from City High, 6 from Liberty High, and 16 from West High. The following seniors in our District have earned this honor:

City High School:
Micah Claassen, Madeline Fischer, Harriet Galloway, James Huynh, John Huynh, Vidya Kumar, Alexandra Patrick-Ferree, Martha Willard

Liberty High School:
Adeline Bair, Joseph Buckwalter, Tayson Cho, Thea Coobs, Colin Finch, and John Galvez

West High School:
Erin Chen, Shannon Chen, Benjamin Donald, Hannah Geng, Alice Gooblar-Perovic, Aahana Gupta, Faisal Hamzeh, Aaron Kang, Henry Lawler, Sharon Liao, Jensen Lin, Mingmei Lumetta, Alexander Rouwenhorst, Rial Shriver, Broderick Young, and Aiden Zhang

To be named as National Merit Semifinalists, these seniors scored among the top one percent of students nationwide on the 2027 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT).

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for Merit Scholarship awards that will be offered next spring. To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements and advance to the Finalist level of the competition.

To become a Finalist, the Semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the Semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2027 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join over 395,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.