In their junior year, high school students enter the National Merit Scholarship Corporation competition when they take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). This year, about 1.5 million students entered the competition. In February, about 15,000 semifinalists were notified that they advanced to finalist standing. Beginning in March and continuing through mid-June, about 8,200 finalists are being notified that they are winners of merit scholarships (which are college or corporate sponsored, or $2,500 National Merit Scholarships).

This year, 15 students from the Santa Barbara district made the list of finalists, and two of those finalists have been selected to receive a Merit Scholarship Award.

Finalists

» Will Stark, Santa Barbara High School, will attend Whitmore College.
» Jae Park, Santa Barbara High School, will attend UC Berkeley.
» Richard O’Dowd, San Marcos High School, will attend the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech).
» Colin Barkley, San Marcos High School, will attend the University of San Diego, majoring in the sciences.
» Daniel Inbar, San Marcos High School.
» Fiona Georgakis, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Columbia University and major in biology.
» Jacob Kovacs-Goodman, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Stanford University and major in economics.
» Corinne Dorais, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Juanita College in Pennsylvania.
» Anna Nelson, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend UC Santa Cruz and study art.
» Alexander Pearson, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend UC Santa Cruz and study English.
» Lillian Preston, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Virginia Tech and study architecture.
» Yidi Wang, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend UCSB and study molecular biology.
» Isabelle D’Arcy, Dos Pueblos High School.

Scholars
» Angela Dai, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Princeton University in the fall. Angela has not yet decided on a major, but she is leaning toward math.
» Mark Skovorodko. San Marcos High School, will attend Westmont College, and his probable career field is civil engineering.

The Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test also qualifies students to enter competitions for recognition programs, such as the National Hispanic Recognition Program. Students must be at least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino, meet the PSAT/NMSQT cutoff score for their state, and achieve above a certain grade point average. Annually, nearly 5,000 of the highest-scoring students (from a nationwide total of more than 200,000 high school juniors) who take the test are identified in the National Hispanic Recognition Program. This year, four of these students are from our district.

» Karen Villegas, Santa Barbara High School, will attend Harvard and major in International Relations and Environmental Policy.
» Rafaell Rozendo, San Marcos High School, will attend Gordon College.
Katie De Heras, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend Vassar College and major in English.
Alejandro Veloz, Dos Pueblos High School, will attend UCLA and major in electrical engineering

Community Service Awards
The top two seniors at the three traditional high schools were recognized on Tuesday by the Board of Education for their outstanding community service work:

Dos Pueblos High School
» Jeff Cifuentes completed 862 hours of community service. Jeff will attend Santa Barbara City College.
» Meaghan Yolles completed 888 hours of community service. Meaghan will attend Pacific University and plans to study elementary education.

Santa Barbara High School
» Ohan Arakelian completed 1,033 hours of community service. Ohan will attend UC Berkeley.
» Rachel Green completed 752 hours of community service. Rachel will attend SBCC.

San Marcos High School
» Johanna Rangel completed 1,214 hours of community service. Johanna plans to attend SBCC.
» Alexandr Kilpelainen completed 1,512.75 hours of community service. Alex will attend UCSB.

— Barbara Keyani is the administrative services and communications coordinator for the Santa Barbara School Districts.