Last Wednesday, sixteen North Penn High School seniors were named semifinalists in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program out of a pool of 1.5 million high school students.

A total of 16,000 US high school seniors who took the PSAT last October were recognized as semifinalists. These selected students are a mere less than one percent of high school seniors in the United States.

Students were chosen based on their established academic talent and their proven potential for success in the future with demanding college studies.

One of the semifinalists, Manpreet Dhankhar, said that receiving this distinction was a huge payoff for her and her fellow semifinalists.

“There are way too many times when you just wonder why you’re putting so much effort into all of this standardized testing, so this is a very big payoff,” said Dhankhar.

“NMSC itself is an excellent opportunity for high school students to earn scholarships with academic talent,” said Neil Goh, another semifinalist. “So to be recognized under this program in such a competitive pool of students is a blessing and an incredible honor.”

Omkar Katta said that he was “blown away” when he found out that he had made it to this point in the competition. “I’ve worked so hard,” Katta said, “and now that the school is recognizing how much my friends and I do, it’s just incredible. I am so thankful.”

All recognized students now have the opportunity to continue on in the competition to compete for more than 7,400 National Merit scholarships that are worth more than $32 million.

The following sixteen North Penn High School students were named as Semifinalists:
Tameem M. Ahsan
Courtney (Cody) Blattner
Manpreet Dhankhar
Neil Goh
Emily R. Halpern
Jenny Huang
Janani S. Kanagasundaram
Omkar A. Katta
Amanda H. Lee
Glen P. Nieman
Mayank J. Patel
Hiba F. Pediyakkal
Joshua M. Weckerly
Victoira L. Wu
Chu Qing (Cathy) Yang
Vivian W. Zeng