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ACHIEVEMENTS |
Two students fromĀ Earl L. Vandermeulen High School in Port Jefferson have qualified as semifinalists in the 63rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program, the district announced Monday.
Ibuki Iwasaki and Luigia Than, both seniors,Ā are among 16,000 high school students nationwide who were awarded the distinction by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
They represent the top 1 percent of students from across the country with the highest scores on the qualifying Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, according to the district.
About 1.6 million high school juniors across the U.S. took the qualifying test.
Iwasaki and Than are now in the running for scholarships worth more than $32 million, and the supreme distinction of being National Merit Scholars.
The scholarship winners will be announced in the coming spring.
Than plays cello, Iwasaki plays violin ā and each are proud of the scientific research experiences
they took part in over the summer, the announcement reads. Than learned coding as part of her work at the Garcia Center for Polymers at Stony Brook University and Iwasaki analyzed data on cosmic rays at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
Four more seniors from the high school were recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Program as Commended Students for their performance on the qualifying test, and their exceptional academic promise, according to the district.
They are Eli Doyle, Matthew Pitko, Joseph Samara and Michael Smith.
Photo (L-R): National Merit semifinalists Luigia Than and Ibuki Iwasaki. (courtesy)
