Fourteen Pingry seniors are among 16,000 semifinalists in the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program. The program honors students who show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies, and the nationwide pool of semifinalists represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors. Including these 14 students, 37 Pingry students have been semifinalists over the past five years.

Semifinalists:
William Brisson
Hannah Castiglione
Edward Huang
Katherine Jung
Anderson Lee
Tingting Luo
Rennick Mirliss
William Overdeck
Jonah Park
Owen Smith
Arjun Subramanian
Albert Wu
Victoria Xie
Christian Zhou-Zheng

To enter the 2026 program, 1.3 million juniors took the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The national pool of semifinalists includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. Approximately 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the finals, and 7,500 National Merit Scholarships will be offered next spring. To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.


Contact: Greg Waxberg ’96, Assistant Director of Communications, Writer/Editor