A Yeshivat Frisch senior, Evan Zauderer, was recently named a semifinalist in the prestigious 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program. The distinction is reserved for only about 1% of all entrants. According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation website, 1.6 million high school students enter the scholarship competition each year, when taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). Students with the top 16,000 test scores are awarded the semifinalist status. Those who advance to finalist standing (about 15,000 of the these semifinalists) will be notified in the spring of 2018.
Evan Zauderer noted the role that his high-level math class at Frisch, with its low student-teacher ratio, played in his experience. “I knew the math on the PSAT because Frisch gave me a very strong foundation in math,” he said. “Also, the English teachers here are unbelievably helpful.” Zauderer is currently in the midst of the college application and decision process. At university, he plans to study mechanical engineering.
In addition to Zauderer, Frisch’s Class of 2018 includes four commended students—Elianna Benhamu, Raphael Katz, Shimon Morgenstern and Zachary Rosenblatt—who were officially recognized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for achieving PSAT scores within the top 50,000 (3.1%) of the 1.6 million student entrants.