School & Family Magazine Newstand Allen ISD Winter 2017 | Page 6

Twenty AHS
Seniors Named
National Merit
Semifinalists
T
wenty Allen High School students have been named
semifinalists in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship
Competition.
About 1.6 million juniors took the 2016 PSAT, which is the
test that qualified students for the 2018 scholarship competition.
Approximately 16,000 students, or about 1 percent, are
recognized as semifinalists, or the highest-scoring entrants.
In addition, 46 seniors were named as Commended Students
in the National Merit Scholarship Competition. These students
scored extremely high on the exam scoring among the top 10%
in the nation.
Allen ISD places great emphasis on preparing students for
the SAT exam, according to Shelly Holmes, AHS advanced
academics coordinator.
Each year, every ninth grade student takes a modified version
of the PSAT and every student in grades 10 and 11 takes the
actual PSAT exam each year. Some students also take the
SAT exam in eighth grade as part of the Duke University TIP
program.
“We are able to use the scores from those exams,” says Holmes,
“to identify areas needing improvement and to personalize
instruction to prepare students for future PSAT and SAT
exams. The high school also offers an intensive summer PSAT
preparation program for high scoring tenth grade students to
prepare them for the eleventh grade PSAT exam.”
While the PSAT exam is nearly identical to the SAT, it is the
SAT score that carries so much weight for high school graduates.
The SAT (and ACT) are still the top two college admission
exams, explained Holmes, so preparing students for both tests
over their high school career can benefit them with more college
options.
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Photo ID: left to right: Back Row: Victoria Catlett, Raghav Chawla, Joe Alappat,
Ryan King, Anurag Vempati, and Christopher Li. Middle Row: James Ardoin, Rahul
Anand, Parker Primrose, Claire Pedison, John Paul O’Brien, Chase Taylor, Kylie
Hoyt. Front Row: Miguel Gomez-Garcia, Tong Chen, Samantha Cheng, Mary Li,
Danica Corbita, Catherine Chen, and Sahiti Golkonda
The 2018 Merit Scholarship Semifinalists selected as
National Merit Finalists will be eligible for National Merit
Scholarships, corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships and
college-sponsored Merit Scholarships. The finalists will be
announced in February.
The Allen High School semifinalists in the 2018 National
Merit Scholarship Program are:
Joe Alappat, Rahul Anand, James Ardoin, Victoria Catlett,
Raghav Chawla, Catherine Chen, Tong Chen, Samantha
Cheng, Danica Corbita, Sahithi Golkonda, Miguel Gomez-
Garcia, Kylie Hoyt, Ryan King, Christopher Li, Mary Li, John
O’Brien, Claire Pedison, Parker Primrose, Chase Taylor and
Anurag Vempati.
The Allen High School Commended Scholars include:
Neel Aligave, Avery Arsenault, Paola Caliguiran, Kareena
Chawla, Hunter Chemelli, Xiangyi Chen, Bidisha Chowdhury,
Renee Cole, Deep Desai, Nicholas Ehlers, Winston Fang, Anna
Fung, Brianna Galt, Helen Goenawan, Christian Hinton,
Ruth Huang, Ryan Jacobs, Divya Jagadeesh, Alvin Joseph,
Haneul Jung, Pranay Kalagara, Sarah Kearney, Guru Kichenan,
Nathaniel Kim, Jennifer Lacour, Jack Lanigan, Anna Lanza,
Stephen Lee, Chang Liu, Timothy Mao, Elizabeth Nguyen,
Raahim Omer, Kevin Oswald, Aashay Patel, Lindsay Rabalais,
Revathi Rajan, Maaha Sakhia, Shaania Sakhia, Maximilian
Seeman, Xzavier Seto, Lauren Sunderhaus, Sahanah Tayab, Ishi
Tripathi, Binglun Yi, Alex Yu, and Julia Zaksek.