Fox Chapel Area students earn lofty academic accolades

• Seven Fox Chapel Area High School seniors have been designated as National Merit Semifinalists and 13 have been named Commended Students in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program.

District semifinalists are Suparna Agrawal, Amulya Garimella, Brendan Gladwin, Ryan Kenyon, Mark Puthenpurayil, Jackson Romero and Vinisha Sant. Commended students are Erin Doherty, Natalka Harris, Emily Li, Lucy Markovitz, John Polcyn, John Scott, Sanjay Seshan, Vivian Shao, Aaron Tien, Michael VanDemark, Joey Wang, Alwyn Williams and Nathaniel Yerage.

All were selected based on their 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scores. More than 1.5 million juniors complete the PSAT/NMSQT and are automatically entered in the National Merit Scholarship Program. About 16,000 advance to become semifinalists and about 34,000 are commended students.

The semifinalists represent less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors and will have the chance to advance to the finalist level and compete for 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million.

• Shady Side Academy 2020 graduates Addie Todd and Mason Tomlin received the 2019-20 Northern Athletic Directors Association (NADA) Tri-Athlete Award.

The award honors high school seniors who participated in three interscholastic sports and had outstanding accomplishments in academics, extracurricular activities and community service. A total of 26 students from 17 northern area high schools were honored.

Todd competed in golf, soccer, squash and lacrosse during her four years, earning a total of 11 varsity letters. Tomlin competed in football, basketball, track & field and lacrosse, earning eight varsity letters.