By Missy Schrott | mschrott@alextimes.com
Four seniors at T.C. Williams High School have been named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, and 13 students have been named Commended Students for their exceptional academic promise, Alexandria City Public Schools announced in September.
The semifinalists are among 16,000 others who will compete for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships in the spring, according to the ACPS press release. This year marks the 64th anniversary of the National Merit Scholarship Program. Recipients of the scholarship will be awarded a total of $31 million.
T.C.’s semifinalists are Mark Bailey, Ava Benbow, Ana Humphrey and Alexander Schlegal. They entered the program last year by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. To be selected, they had to display outstanding academic records throughout high school, earn the endorsement of a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT scores that confirm their performance on the qualifying test.
The 13 Commended Students from T.C. were in the top 3.3 percent of the more than 1.6 million juniors who took the PSAT in October 2017.
Semifinalists and Commended Students were honored at a breakfast with their families in early October. The 2019 National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced starting in April 2019.
