Mississippi National Merit Semifinalists 2017

National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has announced the semifinalists in their 62nd National Merit Scholarship Program. Semifinalists are current high school seniors who took the PSAT in October of 2015. To win the coveted “Semifinalist” designation, students must score in the top 1% of all students in the state.

(This list is for the 2017 competition; for the 2018 competition winners, click here. Photo Caption – At 15 National Merit Semifinalists, Madison Central High School was #1 in the state)

Semifinalists are eligible for full rides to Ole Miss and Mississippi State (valued at more than $60,000) plus more than 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships and 4,000 college-sponsored scholarships.

Out of 1.6 million juniors entering the competition by taking the PSAT, approximately 16,000 students score in the top 1% to earn the designation “Semifinalist,” and about 90% of these will go on to become “National Merit Finalists.” Only 2500 students will earn a $2,500 scholarship and the title National Merit Scholar.

Piqosity has confirmed directly with NMSC that the cutoff score for obtaining “Semifinalist” designation in Mississippi was a 212 and a 209 for Commended.

Top Mississippi Schools by National Merit Semifinalists

The schools on this list had three or more Semifinalists in the 2017 competition:

1. Madison Central HS – 15
2. Mississippi School for Math and Science – 12
3. Jackson Preparatory School – 9
4. Northwest Rankin HS – 8
5. St. Andrew’s Episcopal School – 7
6. DeSoto Central HS – 7
7. Oak Grove HS – 6
8. Lewisburg HS – 5
9. Clinton HS – 4
10. Germantown HS – 3
11. Gulfport HS – 3
12. Hancock HS – 3
13. Oxford HS – 3

Names of Mississippi Semifinalists by High School for Class of 2017

Congratulations to this year’s high scorers!

Note that the three digit number before a student’s name is their self-selected “College Major Career Code.” 999 means undecided; click here to download the explanation to all codes.

BAY H. S.

1. 450 Frommeyer, Jake W.

BILOXI H. S.

1. 160 Peine, Justin D.

BRANDON H. S.

1. 771 Morgan, Thomas P.
2. 836 Walker, Megan M.

BROOKHAVEN H. S.

1. 628 Gardner, Mason B.

CENTER HILL H. S.


1. 833 Muniz Cortes, Adolfo

CLINTON H. S.

1. 120 Bishop, Lorena C.
2. 450 Little, Bryce J.
3. 459 Reddy, Saideep G.
4. 185 Reese, Kaitlyn M.

CORINTH H. S.

1. 450 Villaflor, Daniel G.

DE SOTO CENTRAL H. S.

1. 250 Achord, Campbell O.
2. 169 Brunson, Taylor
3. 160 Jones, Shelby E.
4. 400 Maddox, Noah L.
5. 254 Mitias, Alana M.
6. 712 Neal, Anthony C.
7. 457 Nelsen, Patrick J.

D’IBERVILLE H. S.

1. 553 Morgan, Kameron B.

EAST CENTRAL H. S.

1. 943 Byars, Emily
2. 451 Eyre, Sarah E.

EAST RANKIN ACADEMY

3. 467 Winstead, Joseph W.

GAUTIER H. S.

1. 454 Humber, Gabrielle M.

GERMANTOWN H. S.

1. 451 Brunson, Thomas M.
2. 628 Ivan, Owen B.
3. 628 Usher, Alex M.

GULFPORT H. S.

1. 948 Hewes, James F.
2. 455 Marquez, John T.
3. 457 Powell, Daniel L.

HANCOCK H. S.

1. 161 Keith, Amy E.
2. 999 Konopacki, Marie A.
3. 360 Papania, Timothy A.

HARRISON CENTRAL H. S.

1. 628 Stoner, Timothy

HARTFIELD ACADEMY

1. 162 Thaggard, Grace C.

HERNANDO H. S.

1. 999 Cavitt, Kathryn A.

HERITAGE ACADEMY

1. 451 Yingst, William A.

FORREST COUNTY AGRICULTURAL H. S.

1. 628 Thornton, Madison N.

HOMESCHOOL

1. 464 Bridges, Noah G.
2. 870 Kelly, Daniel W.
3. 303 Magee, Elijah B.

JACKSON ACADEMY

1. 303 Schott, Alexander J.
2. 450 Usey, Nancy L.

JACKSON PREPARATORY SCHOOL

1. 450 Andress, Paul D.
2. 450 Davis, John D.
3. 712 Iacono, Julia R.
4. 943 Marchetti, Lawson D.
5. 470 Massey, William B.
6. 450 Roberson, Benjamin W.
7. 553 Van Pelt, Katharine C.
8. 450 Wasson, Robert G.
9. 678 Zummallen, Kennedy J.

LEWISBURG H. S.


1. 000 Baldwin, Cory R.
2. 999 Huffman, Jessica V.
3. 999 Lee, Madison B.
4. 999 Reeves, Garrett S.
5. 520 Tonkins, Samantha M.

MADISON CENTRAL H. S.

1. 454 Dixit, Reyna M.
2. 185 Dunn, Alexander R.
3. 628 Hill, Anna E.
4. 628 Joshua, Kaitlin H.
5. 454 Joyner, Mason C.
6. 605 Kessler, Paige B.
7. 467 Li, Jesse
8. 999 McKinnis, Harrison P.
9. 451 Sawaya, Sean M.
10. 628 Smith, Ryan A.
11. 200 Street, Riley S.
12. 870 Taylor, Sydney N.
13. 467 Thomas, Charles S.
14. 450 Yin, Nathan
15. 999 Zhang, Emily Y.

MADISON – RIDGELAND ACADEMY

1. 201 Chance, Clay D.
2. 999 Ruwe, Cooper J.

MAGNOLIA HEIGHTS SCHOOL

1. 999 Correro, Richard G.
2. 467 McNabb, Connor R.

MERIDIAN H. S.


1. 450 Clymer, Silas J.

MISSISSIPPI SCHOOL FOR MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE

1. 200 Chawla, Nayan N.
2. 450 Cieslinski, Daniel J.
3. 843 Colley, William C.
4. 175 Ferguson, Raven E.
5. 628 Foldenauer, Braeden J.
6. 300 Hook, Emily E.
7. 710 Hsu, Haley Y.
8. 830 Jenkins, Joshua
9. 451 Klein, Elizabeth G.
10. 160 Leise, Christian A.
11. 162 Smith, Lauryn E.
12. 450 Zhao, Andy

NORTHWEST RANKIN H. S.

1. 948 Carter, Anna
2. 628 Christian, Flint G.
3. 628 Guo, Kevin K.
4. 906 Lin, Benny
5. 630 Mitchell, Anna K.
6. 457 Nelson, Roselynn H.
7. 459 Riser, Elijah J.
8. 501 Xie, David

OAK GROVE H. S.

1. 833 Fox, Dalton L.
2. 160 Greer, Sarah H.
3. 628 Guo, Jason J.
4. 162 Huang, Allen Y.
5. 712 Liang, Ruby J.
6. 162 Wilkinson, Jerome W.

PILLOW ACADEMY

1. 450 Abdel-Aziz, Nada A.

PRESBYTERIAN CHRISTIAN SCHOOL

1. 161 Lucas, Elizabeth A.
2. 450 Majors, Benjamin D.

JOSEPH CATHOLIC SCHOOL

1. 999 Doherty, Caroline G.
2. 630 Liess, Andrew S.
3. 450 Smith, Mary E.

MARTIN H. S.

1. 185 Britton, Alyssa J.

OLIVE BRANCH H. S.

1. 950 Walker, John M.

OXFORD H. S.


1. 628 Ankisetty, Nitin
2. 999 Chao, Sichen Shawn
3. 455 Hardy, Rebecca A.

PASCAGOULA H. S.


1. 628 Lawrence, Amelia K.

PASS CHRISTIAN H. S.

1. 999 Scafidi, Molly L.
2. 300 Walrod, Alexander S.

PETAL H. S.


1. 451 Morris, Ethan B.

RIDGELAND H. S.


1. 302 Wilson, McKennley R.

St. ANDREW’S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL


1. 628 Bryan, John C.
2. 454 Carter, Spencer B.
3. 162 Friedrich, Christopher A.
4. 520 Martin, Peter C.
5. 450 McNeel, Emma C.
6. 628 Shenoy, Tanya
7. 900 Williams, Allie K.

PATRICK CATHOLIC H. S.

1. 450 Hancock, Julia L.

STANISLAUS COLLEGE

1. 462 Janowsky, Leyton A.

TUPELO H. S.


1. 450 Arthur, Davis S.
2. 450 Bradford, William R.

VANCLEAVE H. S.

1. 920 Hunt, Dillon W.

WARREN CENTRAL H. S.

1. 000 Talbot, Trevor J.

WEST JONES H. S.

1. 553 Sumrall, James N.

A Warning About Equating Scholars with School Quality

With relatively few hard numbers by which to compare schools, parents may be tempted to look at figures such as “average SAT scores,” “college acceptances,” and number of “National Merit Semi-Finalists.” However, parents should use caution— these data points are admittedly good at describing the profile of a single class, but it’s difficult to verifiably say that there is a direct causal relationship between these college fitness numbers and the quality of the school’s education.

Many academically talented students were already scoring in the top 1% on their SATs even before they entered high school (many 7th graders take the SAT and/or ACT as part of the Duke University Talent Identification Program).

Furthermore, a list of colleges to which graduates have been accepted in the last five years is similarly spurious. For example, if a graduating class has 200 students and one of those students was admitted to Rice or Harvard or MIT, does that mean everyone else got in too? These lists really reveal very little.

These numbers may, however, accurately indicate that a quorum of academic elite students has decided to attend a certain high school. What these statistics indicate then is that if parents want to be among this elite, they may want to follow in the same path.