Marshall Students named National Merit finalists
Eight members of the Marshall School class of 2008 have been named Commended Scholars, four have been named finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program, and one student has received commended recognition for the National Achievement Scholarship Program for outstanding Black American high school students.
The National Merit Scholarship Program is a competition for academic recognition, and possibly scholarship dollars, which began in 1955. High School students enter the National Merit Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT) – a test which served as an initial screen of over 1.5 million entrants from the Class of 2008.
Only 50,000 were selected as part of the National Merit Scholarship preliminary program. Thirty-four thousand of the 50,000 students earned the status of Commended Scholar. Marshall recognized eight of our very own this fall—10% of this year’s senior class. The remaining 16,000 students recognized by National Merit became semi-finalists, four being from Marshall, 5% of this year’s senior class. Each one of them went on to earn the recognition of National Merit Finalist.
Congratulations to Ben Anderson, Nora Cross, Hannah Grune and Anya Johnson. These recognitions aren’t easily attained. The Duluth public high schools combined had a total of seven commended scholars and two finalists.
Two of our National Merit Finalists also received the National Merit Scholarship in recognition of academic promise and distinguished performance in the competition of 2008.
Nora Cross: BNSF (Burlington Northern Sante Fe) Foundation National Merit Scholarship
Hannah Grune: National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Only 1% of Finalists receive this honor.
The National Achievement Scholarship Program, conducted by the National Merit Scholarship corporation, is a privately financed competition established in 1964 to provide recognition for outstanding Black American high school students. Students scoring in the top 5% of more than 140,000 Black American students taking the PSAT each year are recognized through this program. Approximately 1,400 students receive National Achievement commended recognition for outstanding selection index scores on their PSAT exam. Marshall is lucky to have one Commended Achievement Scholar this year, Idril Faith.