By Ellie Shalvarjian
Staff Writer
Mira Costa seniors Lauren Koch, Mariel Nunan, Darby Power, Jiahe Qi, Danit Rich, Alessandro Varieschi and Tanner Yamada have scored themselves a spot in the National Merit Scholars semifinals because of their scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test.
The seven seniors at Costa qualified for being semifinalists through the National Merit Corporation, a nonprofit organization that aims to bring attention to hardworking students across the nation by helping them financially reach their goals. The students gained this opportunity to receive scholarship money through taking the PSAT during their junior year at Costa.
“It’s been a great experience seeing Costa so highly represented with seven merit scholar finalists,” Power said. “I’m extremely proud of my fellow merit scholars and our whole school for getting these scores and scholarships.”
Once the semifinalists are chosen, they have an opportunity to submit school records, teacher recommendations, a list of extracurriculars and a personal essay to put them in the running for a $2,500 scholarship from the National Merit Corporation. About 50% of the finalists end up receiving a scholarship from either the National Merit Corporation or from the college they will attend in the fall.
“Being a finalist was a special opportunity because it depended on the things that we’d done and what we wrote rather than just our test scores,” Koch said. “It felt as if they were actually evaluating us rather than just a statistic or a grade.”
The National Merit Scholar Semifinalists are chosen based off of their PSAT scores, and the top 1% in each state gets chosen, which contains about 16,000 students from across the nation. All of the Costa students that were announced as semifinalists applied to be finalists and all successfully gained the title of being a National Merit Scholar Finalist and received scholarship money, principal Dr. Ben Dale said.
“The award is special because it’s really amazing to know you are part of such a small group of people among everyone who took the test and got the scholarship opportunity,” Power said. “It’s also special because it is helping make it possible for me to attend and afford college easier.”
The scholarship ranged widely in terms of how much money received but either way help to make college more affordable, Power said. The scholarships go directly towards paying for college tuition and the other supplies that go with it. The scholarships are donated from either the National Merit Scholars Association, private corporations, or by the college the student is attending in fall.
“The scholarship I’m receiving isn’t huge, but it’s definitely going to make paying for school a little easier, and will help make it possible for me to attend the school I really want to go to,” Power said. “The whole experience has been exciting, but there were a couple steps along the way to actually seeing if you get a scholarship that were very stressful.”
Seven Costa students qualified for the semifinals, four qualified from Palos Verdes High School, three qualified from Loyola, three from West Torrance, one from South Torrance and one from Chadwick.
“All of our students are amazing but this goes even above that,” Dale said. “It’s extra special because it’s the largest amount of National Merit Scholars that we ever had become semifinalists and move on to being finalists, since in years past we have had many semifinalists but have not had them move on to being finalists.”
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