By Andrew Lovdahl
Gargoyle staff reporter
Posted Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2006, The OG, news

Twenty-one Uni seniors have been named National Merit Commended Students, representing about 36 percent of the 59-member Class of 2007. In mid-September, 15 other Uni seniors were named National Merit Semifinalists. (Click here for our coverage of the semifinalists.)

The commended students are:

Lydia Ansermet
Henry Beberman
Luke Chiang
Anthony Costa
Elizabeth Ford
Benjamin Fu
Nicole Gong
Madeleine Hamlin
Jacquelin Hedeman
Bethany Hutchens
Tomasz Kalbarczyk
Emily Kamm
Samuel Klein
Jonathan Kuck
Paige Martin
Rohun Palekar
Elizabeth Reese
Emily Rosengren
Eleanor Unsworth
Rebecca Wallig
Bianca Zaharescu

These students were drawn from the top 5 percent of the almost 1.5 million high school students who took the PSAT/NMSQT in 2005 and applied for scholarships through the NMSC. The 16,000 highest-scoring students who applied for scholarships became National Merit Semifinalists. The next 34,000 were named commended students.

Unlike semifinalists, commended students cannot progress further in the National Merit selection process, but some can receive corporate scholarships.

When commended students and semifinalists are added together, about 61 percent of Uni's seniors have received National Merit honors this year.

Last year, 25 Uni seniors were commended students and 25 were semifinalists, about 83 percent of the class.

Look for additional coverage of the National Merit Scholarship Program on The OG and in the next print issue of the Gargoyle.