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Meet the National Merit Semifinalists

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| Friday, December 21, 2007 11:25 AM CST | () comments

These students pictured here are special. And rare.

The Bettendorf area has four students who were named National Merit Semifinalists. Meet them here:

Ben Dayman

Kaitlin Anne White

Elizabeth Flesch

Jeff Ryder

More than 1.4 million juniors in almost 21,000 high schools entered the 2007 National Merit Program by taking the 2005 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The National Merit Semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors and include the highest scoring entrants in each state. Source: National Merit Corp.

While this is a great honor in itself, the students are not done competiting for scholarship money. To become a National Merit Finalist, a Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be recommended by his or her school principal and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying test performance. The Semifinalist and a school official then must submit a detailed scholarship application, which includes the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about the Semifinalist’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.

About 15,000 Semifinalists will advance to the Finalist level, and it is from this group that all Merit Scholarship winners will be chosen. Those awards will be announced starting in April.

Commended students

These students honored by the National Merit Corp. but did not advance to semifinalist status but still earned recognition for their test scores:

Bettendorf

Jessica Blaum

Alex Menard

Rachel Williams

Alicia Afrah-Boateng

Ryan Hoffman

Jacob Hemberger

Andrew Wier

Jeremy Brown

Pleasant Valley

Daniell Grothus

Katherine Wall