Eighteen Roxbury Latin Boys Recognized in National Merit Scholar Competition

The National Merit Scholarship Program recently announced the names of students in the Class of 2021, across the country, earning recognition for their academic achievement. This year, 18 Roxbury Latin boys have been recognized—five named National Merit Scholar semifinalists, and 13 others earning commendations from program officials.

In this 66th 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 2021 National Merit Scholarship program by taking the 2019 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 Ben Chang-Holt, Rohil Dhaliwal, Peter Frates, Daniel Sun-Friedman, and John Wilkinson; and commendation recipients John Balson, Robert Balson, Daniel Berk, Ben Brasher, Ben Crawford, David D’Alessandro, Quinn Donovan, Thomas Gaziano, A.J. Gutierrez, Max Hutter, Walker Oberg, Ethan Phan, and Will Specht.