52 Harker seniors from the class of 2022 received the honour of National Merit semifinalist on Sept. 15 after scoring in the top 1% on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT) they had taken the previous school year.

Each year, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation hosts the National Merit Scholarship Program, a national high school competition meant to acknowledge academically gifted students across the country. Beginning in 1995, the program requires high schoolers to take the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (NMSQT) as juniors in order to enter the competition. The PSAT is scored out of 1520 and contains three sections: reading, writing and language and mathematics.

“What College Board says the point of [the PSAT] is, is to see how well you will do on the SAT,” semifinalist April Zhang (12) said. “But then when you take it in junior year, it’s also the qualifying test for National Merit.”

Students from each state with a PSAT/NMSQT score above a qualifying number become National Merit semifinalists and enter the next round of the competition. While 1.5 million highschoolers take the tests each year, only around 16,000 top scoring students, or less than one percent, will become semifinalists. Semifinalists receive their results in September of their senior year.

Semifinalist Malar Bala (12) began preparing for the competition around a month before the test was held on October 13, 2020, although she focused her studying on the Scholastic Aptitude Test (SAT). Preparation for the SAT, which is composed of the same three sections, translates over to the PSAT.

“[Preparation is] just a lot of practice tests and then going over what you did wrong,” Malar said. “It’s mostly figuring out timing and how you’re doing.”

Although extensive preparation plays an important role in the final test results, Malar believes in striking a balance between continuous practice and time away from studying in order to rest. 

“If you know how the test works and you are confident and you practice, don’t kill yourself practicing,” Malar said. “There’s a point that you reach where you have practiced enough and any more practice you do will just make you lose sleep.”

She is proud of her achievements, and acknowledges the hard work behind her PSAT results. However, she also recognizes other more fulfilling accomplishments that exist beyond the exam.

“I’m proud that I did well on the test, and I’m proud of the practice and preparation that I did,” Malar said. “But it is a standardized test. The word standardized kind of takes the fun out of it. I think I’m more proud of [myself] when I do well in a class that I’m struggling in.”

Once the semifinalists have been announced, they may advance to the next round of the competition and choose to apply to be a National Merit Finalist. To apply to be a National Merit Finalist, semifinalists must submit an essay, consistently meet high academic expectations and provide information about their SAT or ACT score in order to affirm their PSAT score. Each year, approximately 90% of the semifinalists are recognized as finalists and awarded with a Certificate of Merit. 

This year’s semifinalists are Malar Bala, Laszlo Bollyky, Erica Cai, Teresa Cai, Cady Chen, Charles Ding, Alice Feng, Adheet Ganesh, Yvan Grinspan, Arnav Gupta, Elvis Han, Victoria Han, Catherine He, Mark Hu, Angeline Yuzifovich, Sinaya Joshi, Vishnu Kannan, Saahas Kohli, Anirudh Kotamraju, Aidan Lincke, Alexander Liou, Michelle Liu, Aaron Lo, Kavita Murthy, Kate Olsen, Sujith Pakala, Muthu Panchanatham, Vienna Parnell, Rishab Parthasarathy, Anishka Raina, Sasvath Ramachandran, Bodhisatta Saha, Dhruv Saoji, Yejin Song, Cindy Su, Aditya Tagore, Emily Tan, Keshiv Tandon, Zeel Thakkar, Rohan Thakur, Nicole Tian, Michael Tran, Pranav Varmaraja, Austin Wang, Daniel Wu, Esther Wu, Alina Yuan, Irene Yuan, April Zhang, William Zhao, Emily Zhou and Gloria Zhu.