Vestavia Hills City Schools

All 23 of Vestavia Hills City Schools’ National Merit Semifinalists are now Finalists — the most of any school in Alabama.

National Merit Finalists at Vestavia Hills High School include (as shown in photograph):

Front Row, L–R: Andrew Sheng, Ali Fathallah-Shaykh, Terence Li, John Pickett, Tashfin Abdullah, Mengzhen Wang, Allison Xie, Madeline Crawford, Kendall Feild, Caroline Tyndall, Cuewon Kim

Back Row, L–R: Bryan Zhang, Ishaan Singh, Timothy Li, Ishaan Garg, Nicholas Snow, Parker Liu, Chase Kaiser, Logan Hawley, Levi Griem, Jack Cobb, Logan Gregory

Not Pictured: Ethan Melenevsky

The 23 National Merit Finalists represent the largest number of Finalists from any individual high school in Alabama this year, according to a release from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. The students also comprise the largest class of National Merit Semifinalists from Vestavia Hills High School since 2006, when the school had 24 Semifinalists.

As National Merit Finalists, these students received some of the highest scores on the PSAT/NMSQT test in the state of Alabama. Finalists must also have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by their high school principal, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm their earlier performance on the qualifying test. As a result, these students represent less than 1 percent of all high school seniors in the U.S.

By making it to the finals stage, the students will be considered for National Merit Scholarships worth more than $26 million that will be awarded this spring. The 2024 National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in a series of nationwide news releases this spring and summer.