Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, September 16, 2009

A district-record 44 seniors in Fayette County Public Schools are semifinalists in the annual National Merit Scholarship Program and will compete for roughly $36 million in college scholarships. That means 20 percent of Kentucky’s 219 contenders come from FCPS, though this district accounts for only about 5 percent of the state’s total student population.

The 16,000 semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of students nationwide – those who scored highest on the 2008 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. About 90 percent of them are expected to advance, and approximately half of the finalists will win
a scholarship.

Three types of awards will be offered: 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships given on a state representational basis, about 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships and some 4,700 college-sponsored awards. Winners will be announced in several waves beginning in April and concluding in July.

Congratulations to these FCPS semifinalists:

Bryan Station High School - Lucy Arthur-Paratley, Clair Schaub

Henry Clay High School - Kristin Andres, Sarah Atkins, Walter Bell, John Cowgill, Emily Estus, Michael Fryar, Ethan Golding, Amelia Hansen, Andrew Riley, Caroline Smith, Mattie Toma, Daniel Webb, Rachel Whiteheart

Lafayette High School - Hannah Johnson, James Pfeiffer, Marshall Roorda

Paul Laurence Dunbar High School - Chih-Ping Chen, Aaron Davidson, Brian Fei, Alexandra Fleischman, Rebecca Fleischman, Aimee Goffinet, Atanas Golev, Josiah Hanna, Matthew Hensley, Dhiyanan Jayamohan, Rahul Joseph, Onda Kim, Nisha Mulay, Elizabeth Osbourne, Anuj Patwardhan, Eugenia Pushkarskaya, Nicole Schladt, Ranajay Sen, Ailin Shen, Darshali Vyas, Arlene Wang, Jingkun Wang, Kevin Wang, Oliver Zhang

Tates Creek High School - Jessica Adkins, Kishore Bose