EAST MARLBOROUGH — For the second straight year, 12 Unionville High School students were named finalists for the National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP) this week — something just 15,000 high school students in the United States can say. The award is granted on the basis of their PSAT and SAT scores, along with their academic achievement and extra-curricular activities.
The students are: Ari Bleemer, Kate Dietrich-Manion, Victoria Francis, Amy Gottsegen, Edward Jing, Erin Kutz, Angela Pan, Barrett Powell, Edward Pyun, Ria Rathi, Jason Shao and Alyssa Trigg.
The winners represent less than 1% of students nationally — more than 1.5 million — who enter the competition.
While being a finalist is not a guarantee of getting scholarship funds for college, typically about half the finalists — about 8,000 students — end up with scholarships either from NMSP sources or from colleges.