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Danville High School boasts three National Merit Scholars

March 30, 2008|STEPHANIE SCHELL

John Liu and Hannah Kagan-Moore don't know what all the hype is about.

Since these Danville High School seniors were named National Merit Scholars, along with classmate Rachel Beckman, they've been featured on a billboard here and had a few newspaper articles written about them.

They said the recognition is nice, but Beckman is definitely the one most excited about it. She was out of school Friday for a college visit, and not available for interview.

More than 1.4 million students in nearly 21,000 high schools across the country entered the 2008 National Merit Program by taking the preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors. Semifinalists chosen represent less than 1 percent of the country's seniors, according to the program's Web site.

To become a finalist, the semifinalist must have an outstanding record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school's principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student's earlier qualifying test performance. About 15,000 students nationwide were chosen as finalists.

From that group, scholarship winners were chosen based on skills, accomplishments and potential for success in rigorous college studies. All three DHS seniors will receive the $2,500 scholarship.

"People seem to think it's a really big deal and that actually makes me laugh," Kagan-Moore said.

Her top three college choices of the nine she applied to are Swarthmore, Skidmore and Grinnell, all for their strong art departments. Liu's top choices are Washington University, Vanderbilt University and any of the Ivy schools that will accept him. They both should start finding out the results of their applications on Monday.

Both agree that a lot of time studying and working hard went into this recognition.

"You get out what you put in," Kagan-Moore said.

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