Wheeler Students Among National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalists for 2022

We are proud to announce that six Wheeler students—Paul Chirkov ’22, Manuel Dal Bo ’22, Hannah Gruber ’22, Maxwell Homer ’22, Spencer Krex ’22, and Noah Medina ’22—are Semifinalists in the 67th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. They now have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships, worth nearly $30 million, that will be offered next spring.

High school juniors entered the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a Finalist, the Semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the Semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

The National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced over a four-month period, beginning in April 2022 and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 362,000 other distinguished students who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

In addition to Wheeler’s Semifinalists, Timothy Chirkov ’22, Elizabeth Chivers ’22, Jillian Iredale ’22, Oscar Lledo-Osborn ’22, Charles Ragona ’22, Lila Rizvi ’22, Philip J Sheer ‘22, Genevieve Steever ’22, Reed Turner-Murray ’22, and Tamar Weil ’22 were named Commended Students in the 2022 program. Although they will not continue in the competition for National Merit Scholarship awards, Commended Students placed among the top four percent of scorers on the PSAT/Qualifying Test.