HIGH ACHIEVERS—Seven Oak Park High School students are named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, an academic honor earned by less than 1 percent of high school seniors in the U.S. Back row, from left: Steffan Kim, Amir Mohammadzadeh, Brandon Camhi and Moe Scott. Front row: Allison Dods, Isabella Sayyah and Angela Lin. Seven Oak Park High School students were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

Brandon Camhi, Allison Dods, Steffan Kim, Angela Lin, Amir Mohammadzadeh, Isabella Sayyah and Moe Scott are among the approximately 16,000 semifi- nalists in the 57th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

About 90 percent of the semifi nalists are expected to earn finalist standing, and more than half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation is a not-for-profit organization established in 1955.

About 1.5 million juniors in 22,000 high schools across the nation entered the 2012 National Merit Scholarship competition by taking the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship qualifying test.

The test screens initial candidates for the contest. The nationwide pool of semifinalists represents less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist, a semifi nalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the high school principal and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. The student and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application that includes an essay and information about the semifinalist’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2012 will be announced from April to July.

OPHS students raise scores

The 2011 Oak Park High School graduating class turned in the highest average SAT scores in the school’s history, said Superintendent Tony Knight. The mean score of 1,778 was up 43 points over 2010, he said.

“This is 265 points higher than the state average and 278 points higher than the national average,” Knight said. The state and national figures include student scores in private schools.

Knight said 74 percent of OPHS seniors took the SAT, up from 72 percent the year before.

OPHS Principal Kevin Buchanan said that, in the 2011 senior exit survey, 63 percent of seniors reported that they had been accepted for admission by one or more four-year universities.

Students attending a community college or four-year university made up more than 94 percent of the graduating class, Buchanan said.

More than 80 percent of OPHS seniors said they had completed course requirements for entry into a UC or state university in California, and each year more than 30 percent of Oak Park seniors are accepted to at least one campus of the University of California, Buchanan said.

“Our students are regularly accepted to other prestigious schools in California, such as Stanford, the University of Southern California, Pitzer, Harvey Mudd and Claremont McKenna,” Buchanan said. “We also have students admitted to out-of-state schools such as Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, NYU, Tufts, Boston University, Rice, West Point and the United States Naval Academy, among many others.”