By Shelby Stewart
Staff Writer
Brandon- This year, one student from Brandon High School is a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship Program.
Sarah Pesta, 16, is a senior at Brandon who scored a 1480 of 1600 possible on her PSAT.
Each October junior high school students, like Pesta, take the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) to assess where they are academically as the start their junior year. Of the 1.5 million students that take the exam about 50,000 are recognized for their high scores as commended or semi-finalist. About 34,000 are commended students while the semi-finalist represent about 16,000. Of the semi-finalists, 7,600 of them will receive a scholarship.
Pesta said she plans to go to University of Michigan Ann Arbor to study something in the math or science field. Currently she is taking 3 Advance Placement (AP) classes, including her favorite AP Chemistry, and is dual enrolled at Oakland Community College.
“Sarah is the epitome of what it means to be a conscientious student,” said BHS Principal Dan Stevens. “Not only does Sarah get good grades, but she got perfect scores on two different advance placement exams which are college level classes.”
Stevens also said that she has recently recieved the highest SAT score he has ever seen from a Brandon student.
“The national merit program is an extremely prestigious award, so I am very proud to have Brandon students in this exclusive group,” said Dr. Matt Outlaw. district superintendent