Students from high schools in Jupiter, Riviera Beach, Wellington and West Palm Beach have been selected as 2027 National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists.
More than 16,000 high school seniors across Florida and nationwide received the designation, putting them one step closer to competing for about 6,700 scholarships worth about $24 million.
The students were announced Sept. 9 by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. Semifinalists represent less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors and earned their place through top scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, a release from the program said.
Students who advance to finalist standing must submit a detailed
scholarship application, maintain a strong academic record, receive a recommendation from a school official, write an essay and earn qualifying SAT or ACT scores.
The National Merit Scholarship Corp., founded in 1955, conducts the annual competition with support from businesses, colleges, universities and individual donors. The organization said semifinalist totals should not be used to compare schools, districts or states because the program recognizes individual student achievement rather than school performance.
More information about the scholarship program is available at nationalmerit.org. Here are Palm Beach County's 2027 Merit Scholarship semifinalists:
Jupiter High School
- Ellyson Godinho
- Camille Lyn
- Olivia Veselov
Suncoast High School, Riviera Beach
- Emma Duran-Mendez
- Benjamin Endrud
- Noah Goldfarb
- Raul Junco Suarez
- Sophia Kastanias
- Wenning Liang Chen
- Lucas Mor
- Claire Park
- Stefanie Ratchev
- Kavitha Sreekumar
- Matthew Tieu
- Zitian Yang
Palm Beach Central High School, Wellington
- Brian Li
Wellington High School
- Jarrett Roland
Dreyfoos School of the Arts, West Palm Beach
- Mabruk U. Alam
- Oliver M. Chase
- August H. Green
- Rishi Iyer
- Mia A. Martinez
- Halle K. Swinamer
- Anthony Tan
Greene School, West Palm Beach
- Zayn Zyoud
Cardinal Newman High School, West Palm Beach
- Elias Azzi
- John Azzi
Oxbridge Academy, West Palm Beach
- Noah Haspel
- Eamon Lappas-Ford
Seminole Ridge High School, Westlake
- Jayren Plaza Bermudez
This story was produced by reporter John Gallas, jgallas@usatodayco.com, with the assistance of Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Journalists were involved in every step of the review, editing and publishing process. Learn more atcm.usatoday.com/ethical-conduct.
Maya Washburn is a Trending News Reporter for The Palm Beach Post, part of the USA TODAY Florida-Network. Reach her at mwashburn@pbpost.com. Support local journalism: Subscribe today.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: 30 Palm Beach County students named National Merit semifinalists
