Twenty-Five RL Boys Recognized in National Merit Scholar Competition

The National Merit Scholarship Program recently announced the names of students in the Class of 2020, across the country, earning recognition for their academic achievement. This year, 25 Roxbury Latin boys have been recognized (representing 48% of the class)—seven named National Merit Scholar semifinalists, and 18 others earning commendations from program officials.

In this 65th annual National Merit Scholarship competition, semifinalists have the opportunity to become finalists and compete for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships, nationwide. The awards are supported by the organization and approximately 400 businesses and educational institutions, to “honor the nation’s scholastic champions and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence.”

About 1.5 million juniors in more than 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship program by taking the 2018 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 Avi Attar, David LaFond, Eric Ma, Ian Richardson, Jonathan Weiss, Andrew Zhang, and Christopher Zhu; and commendation recipients Ian Balaguera, Joey Barrett, Nick Chehwan, Jack Cloherty, Aidan Cook, Cameron Estrada, John Harrington, Rijs JohansonGordet, Evan Kisselev, Christian Landry, Austin Manning, Kameron Miller, Hari Narayanan, Liam O’Connor, Jack Ringel, Tim Smith, Michael Stankovich, and Blair Zhou.