Every year, Riverside Brookfield High School offers the PSAT/NMSQT exam in October that all juniors have the opportunity to take. In 2024, among everyone that took the exam at RB, seniors Quinn Hendricks, Zack Rosenfeld, and America Castaneda received high scores and became semifinalists for the National Merit Scholarship. This honor is highly regarded and can have a variety of benefits for students.
The National Merit Scholarship first chooses 50,000 students to recognize for their impressive scores. Of those, 34,000 are named as commended students and 16,00 are semifinalists. Only 748 were then chosen to be semifinalists for the class of 2026 in Illinois. Next they are required to fill out an application in order to be considered for becoming a finalist. After achieving the honor of being a finalist, they can receive scholarships for college; but even if they don’t become finalists, it is still a big accomplishment.
“I was very happy to hear that I received the award,” Rosenfeld said. “I was excited because you can get some money, it helps pay for college, and it’s kind of a big deal to put on your college application because that’s national recognition, so it definitely felt really good to have that.”
These students, like many at RB, have big hopes for the future. Receiving this award and being able to acknowledge the accomplishment on a college application has a very big impact on the admittance process and opens many new paths for students to take due to possible scholarships.
“I’m going to try to study math or physics, and I’m applying to a lot of colleges, but some of my favorites that I really hope to get into are Duke and Tulane,” Hendricks said.
Obtaining a qualifying score of 222 points, based on the NMSQT scoring system, to become a semifinalist in Illinois is not an easy task. Becoming a finalist is even more selective because it includes an application, a second test submission, being able to show a consistent and exemplary academic record, and receiving support from a staff member at the school. With this big accomplishment comes a lot of big emotions.
“I actually started crying because I believed in my head that the max I’ll get is a much lower score than I got,” Castaneda said. “I feel like for me it was kind of like a particular emotional moment just because I’m not from this area, and I grew up in a very low income area. I just didn’t believe that this sort of thing was a possibility for me, so I feel like because I’ve worked very hard to get up to the level of the top students in an area where there are many more resources, and pushing through the past four years when I moved here, all lead up to a very emotional moment when I opened my PSAT score.”
All three of these students are hard working and focused on their academics. Each of them prepared for the test in their own ways and recommended different strategies for other students that want to achieve this award.
“I only studied on Khan Academy by specifically pinpointing my weak points on the test,” Castaneda said. “Don’t go and do every single lesson. Find your weak points on the score report on College Board and study those weak points specifically, because that’s what I did for about a week.”
Note: Managing Editor Quinn Hendricks, a member of the Clarion staff, was included in this article for his achievement as a National Merit semifinalist. Coverage was handled impartially.
