Update: Sept. 1, 2016

Michael Zhao, another 2016 graduate, was recently named a 2016 winner of a National Merit Scholarship, bringing the total number of winners to 13. Congratulations!

Update: June 9, 2016

Three more members of the Class of 2016 have won National Merit Scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced in early June. These college-sponsored scholarship winners are Stephanie Huang (Northwestern University), Joshua Hung (University of Southern California) and Jonathan Dai (Northwestern University). 

This announcement brings the total number of National Merit Scholarship winners from the 2016 senior class to 12. 

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The National Merit Scholarship Corporation just announced this year’s $2,500 National Merit Scholarship winners, and six Harker seniors are among them. Karen Qi, Evan Lohn, Vivek Bharadwaj, Victoria Ding, Anika Mohindra and Allison Wang were among 2,500 scholarship winners nationwide, who were chosen from more than 15,000 finalists.

Last month, seniors Emily Pan, Esther Wang and Vineet Kosaraju were among 1,000 students nationwide to receive corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards.

College-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in June and July.

More than 1.5 million high school students were entered into this year’s National Merit Scholarship Program after taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in October 2014. Less than 1 percent of these students went on to the semifinal round of the competition, and 15,000 of those were named finalists. To be eligible for a National Merit Scholarship, semifinalists must demonstrate good academic standing, be recommended by a school official and receive scores on their SAT exams consistent with their performance on the qualifying tests. They must also complete an application that details the awards they’ve received, their extracurricular activities and leadership positions they have held.