News

September 10, 2020 Achievements

5 Siouxland students make National Merit semifinalist list

National Merit Scholarship Program Logo

Five Siouxland high school students are among 16,000 semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

The seniors will have the chance to continue in the national competition for roughly 7,600 National Merit Scholarships that will be offered in the spring.

The Siouxland semifinalists in Northwest Iowa are Jadyn Roder of Sioux City East High School and Camric Hamann of Maple Valley-Anthon Oto High School. In Southeast South Dakota, those honored include three seniors from Dakota Valley High School: Alexander Messersmith, David Wagner, and Tianyu Zhou.

There were no semifinalists from Northeast Nebraska.

The National Merit semifinalist honor goes to the top 1 percent of students who took the PSAT-NMSQT exam as juniors in October 2019.

About 90 percent of semifinalists are expected to become finalists for the awards, which will total $30 million in scholarships.

View the full article by Bret Hayworth on the Sioux City Journal.