Oak Park and River Forest High School has announced 16 of its students have been named as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for the 2017 program.
Students receiving the honor include Michael Biek, Kevin Farrell, Eric Forehand, Hannah Green, Harrison Green, Garrett Hauck, Conor Johnson, Ted Loewenthal, Beatrice Lowson, Regina Miller, Jonathan Niewijk, Curtis Reichardt, Simon Reisig, Katherine Sang, Alexander Schoeny and Sanjeev Venkatesan.
As National Merit semifinalists, the students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 scholarships worth about a total of $33 million, which will be awarded next spring.
About 1.6 million juniors from 22,000 high schools nationwide entered the 2017 program by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Of those students, 16,000, or less than 1 percent of the nation’s high school seniors, qualified as semifinalists by being among the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
About 15,000 semifinalists are expected to be notified in February that they have advanced to the finalist round, from which 2,500 winners of $2,500 National Merit Scholarships will be chosen.
It is estimated about 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be given to students who meet the corporations’ specific criteria, and about 190 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 4,000 Merit Scholarship awards to finalists who will attend their instructions.
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