Holly Sutherland

56 seniors from six different HISD high schools are among the Nationalsemi-finalists for the National Merit Scholarship program of 2013. An astonishing 33 out of those 56 seniors came from Bellaire High School. With more than half of the semi-finalists being from our very own school, these hardworking students will now have the opportunity to compete for more than 8,300 scholarships worth over 32 million dollars. This will be their token of hard work and dedication as they are being awarded for their academic excellences and an outstanding PSAT score. The cut off score for the PSAT in Texas was a 216.  High scoring students on the PSAT/ NMSQT receive letters of commendation in recognition of their exceptional academic pledge. Although commended students do not proceed in the same competition for the National Merit Scholarships, some can become candidates for special scholarships subsidized by corporations and businesses. In order to become a finalist, a semi-finalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout his/her high school years, write an essay, obtain a recommendation from a high school official and earn high SAT scores, approving his/her previous qualifying scores. This will be no problem for our intelligent young students who have consistently conveyed not only remarkable intellect and scores, but character and resilience as well. All of the national merit semi-finalists have worked diligently, which in return has represented Bellaire High School well. This will just be another accomplishment that our talented students can add on their list!

Shown in photo:

Row 1: Peter Elmers, Ben Liu, Andrei Didenko, Alexander Franshaw, Blaine Cole, Sarah Godwin, Kirby Ledvina, Aj Mao, Joseph Lau, Willis Nguy, Molly Dyer

Row 2: Jackie Luo, Anneliese Gest, Garland Gay, Lindsey Alter, Andrew Alter, Katherine Fang, Carrie Jiang, Halla Bearden, Holly Reichert, Kevin Chen

Row 3: Xinghua Dou, Adarsh Nednur, Linus Shih, Vivek Kantamani, Alex Mo, Diana Ruan, Alice Tao, Edward Yun, Zara Khan

Not in photo: Christina Breitbeil, Helen Mazella, Amanda Pevehouse