Seniors named National Merit Finalists

From left to right: Arnim Kuchhal, Rohit Velankar, Rayna Huang, Benjamin Fiedler, Anna Delale-O’Connor, David Black and Zhana Neumann

Seven Fox Chapel Area High School seniors have been designated as National Merit Finalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program. The Finalists from Fox Chapel Area High School are David Black, Anna Delale-O’Connor, Benjamin Fiedler, Rayna Huang, Arnim Kuchhal, Zhana Neumann and Rohit Velankar.

These Fox Chapel Area High School students were named Semifinalists in September 2024 and have met all the requirements to advance to Finalist standing in the competition for National Merit Scholarships. The students are selected as Finalists based on their Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) scores and other factors, including SAT and/or ACT scores, a student essay, a school recommendation, and having an outstanding academic record throughout high school.

Each year college-bound 11th-grade students complete the PSAT/NMSQT. All the students who take this test are automatically enrolled in the National Merit Scholarship Program and approximately 15,000 advance to become Finalists. The Finalists represent less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors and compete for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered this spring.