Bellaire students named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists

Several Bellaire High School and Episcopal High School students have been recognized as semifinalists in the 58th National Merit Scholarship Program.

From Bellaire High School are Andrew Alter, Lindsey Alter, Halla Bearden, Christina Breitbeil, Kevin Chen, Blaine Cole, Andrei Didenko, Xinghua Dou, Molly Dyer, Peter Elmers, Katherine Fang, Alexander Franshaw, Garland Gay, Anneliese Gest, Sarah Godwin, Carrie Jiang, Vivek Kantamani, Zara Khan, Joseph Lau, Kirby Ledvina, Benjamin Liu, Jacqueline Luo, Aaron Mao, Helen Mazella, Alexander Mo, Adarsh Nednur, Willis Nguy, Amanda Pevehouse, Holly Reichert, Diana Ruan, Yulan Shih, Jun Ling Tao and Edward Yun.

The Episcopal High School semifinalists are Joanna Lefebvre, Timothy McMahon and Abigail Porter.

According to a school press release, these students are among the 16,000 semifinalists in this year's program from more than 1.5 million students in 22,000 high schools.

The students began the current competition by taking the October 2011 PSAT and NMSQT tests. The 2013 finalists will be announced in February, and the winners will be made public this spring and summer. Around 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standings. Half of these will win a National Merit Scholarship and will be named Merit Scholars.

Established in 1955, National Merit Scholarship Corporation is an independent, nonprofit organization and operates without government assistance, according to the NMS website.

Bellaire High School is located at 5100 Maple, Bellaire. Episcopal High School is located at 4650 Bissonnet St., Bellaire.

For more information, call 713-295-3704 or 713-512-3400 or visit bellaire.org, ehshouston.org or nationalmerit.org.