RL Boys Recognized in National Merit Scholar Competition

2018 National Merit Semifinalists Erik Zou, Tomas Gustafsson, Nate Lopes, Ben Rounds, and Taalin RaoShah

The National Merit Scholarship Program recently announced the names of students in the Class of 2018, across the country, earning recognition for their academic achievement. This year, 25 Roxbury Latin boys have been recognized—five named National Merit Scholar semifinalists, and 20 others earning commendations from program officials.

In this 64th annual National Merit Scholarship competition, semifinalists have the opportunity to become finalists and compete for some 7,500 National Merit Scholarships, nationwide. The awards are supported by the organization and approximately 410 businesses and educational institutions, to “honor the nation’s scholastic champions and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.”

About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship program by taking the 2017 PSAT, which serves as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to become finalists. Scholarship recipients are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for academic success at the college level.

Roxbury Latin boys earning recognition this year include semifinalists Tomas Gustafsson, Nate Lopes, Taalin RaoShah, Ben Rounds, and Erik Zou; and commendation recipients Adam Berk, Jared Brosnan, John Frates, Dominic Gaziano, Isaiah Goldsmith, Ethan Kee, Makoto Kobayashi, Charlie Mazof, Colin Miller, Ben Morris, Kalyan Palepu, Milan Rosen, Gil Rosenthal, Quito Sanchez, Rohan Sheth, Elias Simeonov, Luke Streckenbach, Trey Sullivan, Eric Zaks, and Lucas Zheng.