GAINESVILLE - Three Hall County School District (HCSD) students have been named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists: Abbie Cliché (Chestatee), Andrew Hathcock (Chestatee), and Nicholas Wheeler (North Hall).
Cliche and Hathcock are both considering Georgia Tech and MIT as their college choices. Abbie is interested in pursuing chemical engineering as her major and Andrew is interested in pursuing materials science as his major. Nicholas Wheeler, a 2015 NHHS graduate, is currently enrolled at Harvard with a joint concentration in physics and astronomy.
About 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2014 Preliminary sat/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (psat/nmsqt®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
Georgia had the 10th highest qualifying score requirement in the nation on the PSAT. These students will compete with approximately 16,000 high school seniors from around the country to have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring.
In addition, Kayla Krauth of Chestatee High School has been named a National Merit Hispanic Scholar. Krauth plans to attend Georgia Tech and major in mechanical engineering. Every year, the National Hispanic Recognition Program (NHRP) recognizes about 5,000 of the 250,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors who take the test.
Click here http://www.nationalmerit.org/ to access a list of other semifinalists in the area and the state.
