12 Spring-Ford Seniors Recognized by National Merit Scholarship Program

Spring-Ford Area High School's senior class has many achievements to their names, and at Monday night's board meeting another group of honors was announced. 

Dr. Jeffrey Kollar, the 12th Grade House Principal, and Superintendent Dr. David Goodin recognized twelve students who achieved high honors in the National Merit Scholarship program. 

Six seniors - Nikhil Bhat, Kayla Dwyer, Nicholas Goman, Amanda Jurewicz, Meghan Keshav and Rachel Schwarz - were named Semi-Finalists in the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Out of more than 1.5 million students who took the qualifying test, these six scored in the top 16,000. 

They will go on to be considered for one of the 8,300 National Merit Scholarships to be awarded later this school year. 

Six more students - Andrew Carr, Christina Maziarz, Marybeth Moscirella, Sarah Payonk, Eric Rife, and Julianne Wu - were named "Commended Students".

Those six seniors are among 34,000 students who scored in the commended academic achievement range. According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, the qualifying score for Commended Students is in the 96th percentile of the scored of all college-bound juniors who took the test. 

While Commended Students do not advance further in the competition, they are still recognized by the corporation for their achievement. 

The National Merit Scholarship Program awards over $44 million in scholarships yearly. Scholarships fall into one of three categories. 

• $2500 scholarships awarded by the National Merit Scholarship Program.
• Corporate-sponsored Scholarships awarded by a company to students who are either children of employees, live in an area where a company has a large presence, or are planning a career that the company wants to encourage.
• College-sponsored scholarships given by colleges to students who plan to attend that school.