The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Freshmen among National Merit Scholarship semifinalists
MIDDLETOWN — Xavier High School seniors Akshay Khunte and Hyun Lee are semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program, which puts them in exclusive company.
“It’s good to be recognized because a lot of work went into it,” Khunte, student body president, said in a prepared statement. “It opens you up to a lot of scholarship opportunities, and I hope that goes somewhere.”
“It’s pretty prestigious and I am glad I received it,” Lee said in a press release. “It looks good on a college application.”
Lee wants to pursue some area of engineering in college, while Khunte is most interested in math and computer science at this time. Both are members of Mu Alpha Theta, the mathematics honor society, according to Xavier.
Khunte said the award is a “good reminder that the work we put in has fruit. A lot of work is ahead of me this year and in college. In that regard, it feels good to have gotten something out of the work of the last three years. It encourages me to do more work.”
“It’s a nice way to start off the year — on a happy note,” Lee said.
The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. More than 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, according to the release.
Of those students, about 1 percent are recognized nationally as semifinalists for their outstanding performance. The majority of the 16,000 semifinalists, now seniors, will become finalists who are eligible for 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million and offered in the spring of 2020. About half of the finalists will receive a scholarship and become a Merit Scholar.
“The math and literature courses, the whole Xaverian education you receive, has been instrumental in me getting the award,” Khunte said.
Each student was honored at the traditional Opening of School Mass Sept. 9 in the recently refurbished Kohs Gymnasium.