On September 13, Wauwatosa West High School students Ian Fleuchaus and Mara Holzen were named semifinalists in the 2024 National Merit® Scholarship Program. Additionally, two students at Wauwatosa East High School, Theodore Bock and Daniel Kreklow, and two students from Wauwatosa West, Nico Long and David Miller, were recognized as Commended Students in the program.
Fleuchaus and Holzen are among 160,000 students nationwide named as semifinalists in the 69th annual National Merit® Scholarship program. Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2024 National Merit® Scholarship Program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.
"We are truly honored to recognize and congratulate Ian and Mara on their achievement of becoming semifinalists in the National Merit® Scholarship Program," said Dr. Demond Means, Superintendent. "They have proven themselves to be impressively bright students with even brighter futures ahead, and we wish them the very best as they continue in this competition."
The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition. About 95 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and approximately half of the finalists will receive a National Merit® Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholars title.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation® (NMSC) is a nonprofit organization established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit® Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by the NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 320 business organizations and higher education institutions that share NMSC's goals of honoring the nation's scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.
The 2024 National Merit® Scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April and concluding in July 2024. These scholarship recipients will join nearly 375,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.
To learn more about the National Merit® Scholarship Program, please visit https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/interior.aspx?sid=1758&gid=2&pgid=1879.