Eight students were recognized as being National Merit Semi-finalists for the class of 2022. Students had to get a qualifying score of 220 on the Selection Index Score in order to achieve this distinction.

The National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test is taken alongside the PSAT for juniors. All juniors, sophomores, and some freshmen took the test in October, 2020.

There are only 16,000 National Merit semi-finalists named globally.

“I think it’s amazing, it’s a huge accomplishment,” lead counselor Kimm Dwyer said, “To have eight students is pretty amazing.”

Many students put lots of work into getting the best score that they can.

“I did practice at Khan Academy for reading, and I used practice books for math,” said Barnett Han, one of the semi-finalists, “It shows that my hard work paid off.”

The next step for the semi-finalists is to apply for the National Merit Finalist Program. Those who are selected will receive a $2,000 scholarship in addition to potentially getting to other college and corporate scholarships. Last year TWHS had six semi-finalists.

The Semi-Finalists at TWHS are:

Barnett Han
Anna Holleman
Leonardo Holloway
Jack Huff
Rajiv Iyer
Carolina Larracilla Onofre
Arjun Radhakrishnan
Alexander Vasquez