Seven students at Falls Church’s George Mason High School were announced today as semifinalists in the 56th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Daniel L. Drawbaugh, Daniel J. Fletcher, Asher R. Morse, Mollie J. Read, Anaraag Sensharma, F. Crawford Taylor and Ross C. Wilson have achieved the honor, GMHS Principal Ty Byrd announced today. The students scored in the top one percent of 1.5 million students nationwide who took the 2009 Preliminary SAT and National Merit Qualifying Test last fall. Only 16,000 of the 1.5 million who took the test were named as National Merit Semifinalists this week.
About 90 percent of semifinalists will go on to become finalists and half of those will win a National Merit Scholarship, it was reported. The finalists will be named next spring.