Contact: Tammy Lane • First Posted: Wednesday, September 15, 2010

A district-record 48 seniors in Fayette County Public Schools are semifinalists in the annual National Merit Scholarship Program and will compete for about $36 million in college scholarships awarded in 2011.  

While FCPS accounts for just 5.6 percent of the student population in Kentucky, the district has 22 percent of the state's semifinalists.

The 16,000 total semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of students nationwide – those who scored highest on the 2009 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. About 90 percent of them are expected to advance, and roughly half of the finalists will win a scholarship.

Three types of awards will be offered this spring: 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships given on a state representational basis, about 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships and nearly 5,000 college-sponsored awards. Winners will be announced in several waves from April to July.  

Congratulations to these FCPS semifinalists:

From Henry Clay High School:

John Aroutiounian, Devin Booker, Jeremy Bradford, Connor Callaway, Amanda Dixon, Elizabeth Hansen, Faina Matveeva, Madeline Mooney, Gregory Myers, Matthew Powell, Neha Ray, Elizabeth St. Clair, Jesse Staben, Christopher Thompson and James Wang.

From Lafayette High School:

Andrea Frost, John Gonzalez, Emma Jackson, Fiona Mowbray, Eleanor Todd and Adam Williams.

From Paul Laurence Dunbar High School:

Michael Bowie, Timothy Cui, Andrew Derenge, Joseph Ferguson, Jingyuan Fu, Dillon Hickman, Sonya Hildebrand, Sandy Huang, Andrew Johnson, Arunita Kar, Kevin Kral, Nashwin Laungani, Jay Li, Emily Lin, Victor Macrinici, Patrick Michael, Roshan Palli, Paul Parell, Kelsey Randhawa, Lawrence Rogers, Rebekah Ruth, Wilson Shirley, Gareth Voss, Enoch Yeh and Rory Young.

From Tates Creek High School:

Michael Druggan and Shelby Fulton.