24 Mercer Island seniors honored as National Merit Commended Scholars

October 17, 2017 12:45 pm
MIHS seniors pose with their letters of commendation from the National Merit program. Photo courtesy of the Mercer Island School District
MIHS seniors pose with their letters of commendation from the National Merit program. Photo courtesy of the Mercer Island School District

The National Merit Scholarship Program has recognized 24 Mercer Island High School seniors as commended scholars. They are among 34,000 commended students throughout the nation being honored for their exceptional academic promise.

These students placed among the top 5 percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2017 competition by taking the 2015 preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship qualifying test.

They are: Miles Alderman, Samuel Bailey, Estey Chen, Nicole Chen, Katherine Gelsey, Joshua Glant, Zachary Gottesman, Julia Graham, Emily Kim, Owen Kovarik, Thomas Latkowski, Oliver Lee, William Lee, Andrea Lu, Alexander Mueller, Catherine Panza, Miti Parikh, Vincent Ricci, Avery Smith, Bryan Smoots, Brynn Strother, Lycia Tran, Leah Wootton and Miles Wu.

The students received letters of commendation in recognition of their outstanding academic promise.

Commended students are named on the basis of a nationally applied selection index score that may vary from year to year and is typically below the level required for participants to be named semifinalists in their respective states.