Peninsula High Posts 37 Merit Semifinalists

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School placed 37 students in the semifinals for National Merit Scholarships, the most of any school in the state and ninth nationwide.

The school, with almost 2,900 students, finished No. 1 in the state two years ago and third last year. Scholarship semifinalists are estimated to represent the top 0.5% of the national graduating class.

“It’s a lot of people working real hard,” Principal Kelly Johnson said. “And the families really do support us.”

There were 66 semifinalists among South Bay high schools. The students enter a pool of about 15,000 semifinalists competing for 2,000 scholarships, worth $2,000 each, to be awarded in the spring.

An additional 4,700 students will be awarded scholarships for meeting criteria of scholarship sponsors and educational institutions.

Semifinalists were chosen from more than 1 million juniors attending nearly 19,000 U.S. high schools.

Students qualified for the semifinals by meeting several academic standards and by scoring highest on a test administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

Following is a list of the South Bay semifinalists:

Carson

California Academy of Math and Science: Michael C. Collins, Melinda Li.

Los Angeles

Westchester High School: Michael J. Williams.

Manhattan Beach

Mira Costa High School: Wyatt E. Bloomfield, Kelly Dietz, Ashley S. Douglas, Michael T. Thorpe, Matthew Wilczynski, Jayme L. Yen.

Palos Verdes Peninsula

Chadwick School: Gregory T. Campbell, Aileen M. Level, Sarah S. Lim, Trevor S. Perrin, Brian Sabino, Mark M. Westerfield, Katharine E. Zuckerman.

Palos Verdes Peninsula High School: Daniel S. Ahn, Nicole F. Albright, Shiennien Chang, Robert W. Chen, Chihua M. Chien, Quang M. Do, Katherine P. Dye, Katharine Foster-Keddie, Erin M. Gielow, Geoffrey S. Huang, Joseph Huang, Kevin S. Hwang, Stephanie J. Kang, Josephine J. Ko, Paul Y. Ko, Brian C. Kung, Melissa J. Lau, Edith Lee, Kerry J. Lee, Ginnie Y. Lin, David Liu, Elizabeth A. Logan, Aaron S. Luk, Robin C. Munesato, Eugene Y. Nah, Navin C. Nakra, David H. Pyun, Julienne S. Rha, Kerry J. Shaw, Julie J. Shin, Barry R. Smith, David S. Stein, Amanda E. Stevens, Cary Strumpf, Vivian Tsai, David D. Wu, Brian W. Yue.

Redondo Beach

Redondo Union High School: Kenneth D. Carlile, Aaron A. Klammer, Kevin E. Marsee, Peter T. Wilson.

San Pedro

San Pedro High School: Andrea M. Werfelmann.

Torrance

Bishop Montgomery High School: Wendy E. Connick.

North High School: Helen H. Tran.

South High School: Sung H. Huh, Cheol J. Kwon, Annie M. Pan.

Torrance High School: Lauren M. Fischer, Mike J. Yang.

West High School: Naiwen D. Tu.