National Merit Scholar Awards

Valencia High School – Class of 2014
National Merit Scholar Awards

Mr. James Bell, principal, announced today that a record ten Valencia seniors: Collin Amano, Chad Atalla, Simran Chada, Brian Chu, Daniel Hamidi, Brandon Kao, Brian Lin, Garrett Lin, Aaron Patel, and Mayher Uppal, have earned qualifying scores (2230) on the October 2012 PSAT test for the honor of Semifinalist in the 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program. Students enter the National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT) in the fall of their junior year. The National Merit Corporation names 16,000 Semifinalists representing the top ½% of the 1.5 million-program entrants in the fall of 2012. Representing less than one percent of each states high school seniors, National Merit Semifinalists are the highest-scoring program entrants in each state. Qualifying scholars have the opportunity to advance to the actual cash awards given as Merit Scholarships by the universities they ultimately attend.
In addition Seniors Allexandra Guerrero, William Fletes, David Lepore, and Joshua Lopez earned qualifying scores for the National Hispanic Recognition Program and senior Brent Conley earned a qualifying score for the National Achievement Scholarship Program.
Twenty-three additional students; Andrea Bae, Ryan Borden, Todd Chou, Billy Fletes, Ricky Gleiser, Allie Guerrero, Christian Hong, Harrison Hsueh, Jessica Hu, Nic Jackson, Lisa Jian, Nadaa Kenange, Tanvi Mamtora, Ryan McLaughlin, Angeline Nam, Anna Nguyen, Michelle Nguyen, Neera Patel, JJ Sahabu, Neil Shah, Nikhil Shah, Deszra Shariff, and Mark Walker earned qualify scores (2030) for the 2013 National Merit Commended Student Program. Commended Students placed in the top 5% of the 1.6 million entrants in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
We are very proud of our students and their achievements. We are also proud of our teachers and staff and the role they have played in the development of the outstanding academic program here at Valencia High.