SM East leads district with 9 National Merit Semifinalists

SM East leads the Shawnee Mission School District in National Merit Semifinalists for 2012.

Nine of the district’s 22 National Merit Semifinalists are SM East students.

They are: Toni Aguiar, Andrew Beasley, Spencer Davis, Maggie Fenton, Duri Long, Christiana Reene, Mark Towster, Christian Wiles, and Ian Wiseman.

(You may recall that Wiles is pretty good at taking tests).

SM Northwest and SM West had the second most semifinalists with four each.

The students qualified for the honor based on their performance on the 2010 Preliminary SAT. More than 1.5 million high school juniors took the test that year. The pool of semifinalists represents less than 1 percent of this year’s high school seniors nationwide.

Approximately 15,000 students will be named National Merit Finalists, and the scholarship winners will be selected from that group.