Students Named National Merit Semi-Finalists
Five students in the Portland Public Schools have been named National Merit Semi-Finalists. They are: Nathaniel Jewett, Brian Furey and Mark Kinner of Portland High School and John Clarke and Eric David Mason of Deering High School.
The students were chosen based on their scores on the Preliminary SAT exam. Of the 1.5 million students who took the test, they scored among the top 16,000. Finalists will be named in February 2009.
National Merit also named the following Commended Students: Sidney Dritz, Nathan Buck, Eoin McCarron and Cathryn Cunningham of Portland High and Illaria Dana and Kevin MacDowell of Deering.
About 34,000 Commended Students throughout the nation are being recognized for exceptional academic promise. Although they will not continue in the 2009 competition for National Merit Scholarships, Commended Students placed among the top five percent of more than 1.5 million students who entered the 2009 competition.
Another Deering student, Adaline Lining, has been chosen as a qualifying student in the National Achievement Scholarship Program. That program names the top four percent of the more than 150,000 African-Americans who requested consideration when taking the same qualifying examination.
