Seven high school seniors from North and Carl Hayden High Schools have been named Semifinalists in the 2011 National Merit Scholarship Program.Jake Cohen, Kyle Corales, Candace Evilsizor, Colin Madrid, Ryan Muller and Eric Stucky from North, and Katharyn Garcia from Carl Hayden qualified as semifinalists by being among the highest-scoring entrants in Arizona in the 2009 Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT). The six North students are in the school’s International Baccalaureate Program. Garcia is in the Hayden Computer Science magnet program.
The 16,000 semifinalists this year represent less than one percent of the 1.5 million juniors from over 22,000 high schools who take the PSAT. National Merit Finalists are highly coveted as prospective students to every college and university in the country, and the designation often leads to academic scholarships. The NMSC offers 2,500 scholarships, corporate scholarships number 1,000 and colleges and universities honor National Merit Scholars with 4,900 scholarships.
Jake Cohen’s passion is music, whether he is playing bassoon for the Phoenix Youth Orchestra, with the North Band, or entertaining challenged children as “Dr. Bassoon.” He tries “to better the lives of others with my talents.” His creativity extends to the North drama department, where he has acted and built sets. He is also the vice president of the North Film Society, an improvisational actor and a member of the International Thespian Society. Cohen, who works as an office assistant and volunteers at the Humane Society, has more interests. He has competed in fencing and diving and recently attended a leadership forum on medicine. His career interests are engineering or business. He is deciding between Harvard, Yale, Brown, Amherst, and the University of Penn.
Kyle Corales has plans for a military career, public service and becoming an active member of the community. He has been a squadron deputy commander, color guard commander and emergency services officer with the Civil Air Patrol. He has trained in leadership and search and rescue attending Civl Air Patrol encampment with other cadets each summer. He has also attended cadet officer school in Alabama. Corrales, the captain and four-year letterman on the North swim team, hopes to attend the Air Force Academy, but has also applied to Penn, Rice and Emory Riddle, studying biology, biomedical engineering or global intelligence studies.
Candice Evilsizor is a straight-A student hoping to combine a love of school with a love of people. Her favorite subjects are history and foreign language, particularly French. She is an oboist in the Phoenix Youth Symphony, and is involved in her church youth group. Her summer job was with Aquatots, teaching children to swim, and when she babysits, she brings a prepared curriculum for the children. Evilsizor’s goal is to attend a university that has Peace and Conflict Resolution Studies. She is applying to Yale, Columbia, Georgetown, American University and Notre Dame. She hopes to have a career in international peace keeping, perhaps in Africa or working with the U.N. She describes herself as having “a strong sense of justice. In a land where justice rules, peace is not far behind.”
Colin Madrid not only had an outstanding PSAT, but also scored a perfect 800 in critical reading in the SAT exam. He loves physics, understanding how things work, and how to design things in a better way for greater efficiency. He has competed for the North Swim team, and is involved in weight training, wrestling and Brazilian Jujitsu. Madrid would like to major in environmental engineering and enter the field of alternative and renewable energy. He is applying to MIT and ASU.
Ryan Muller scored a perfect 80 in the PSAT math exam and is so advanced in his academics that he took pre-calculus as a freshman, and is independently taking multi-variable calculus through MIT, online. Other classes he has tackled include linear algebra , differential equations and organic chemistry. He is the president of the Creativity, Action and Service club that performs community service, is founder and captain of the revived North Speech and Debate club, and a member of the French club. Muller has participated in cross country, swim team and National Honor Society, and has had perfect attendance. He attends the Chinese Contemporary School of Arizona, learning culture and language and was a Bio Design Research intern with ASU. His career interests are medical, research, advanced math and science. He has applied to MIT, Harvard, Johns Hopkins and Northwestern.
Eric Stucky aced his math and writing PSATs, and had a perfect 800 score in SAT Math Level 2. He is currently taking math independent studies. He says he loves math, loves talking about math, and uses it as a creative outlet. Stucky is the captain of the North Boys Tennis team, is a member of the chess team, the National Honors Society and participates in the Northtown Family of Leaders diversity camp. He works with Social Venture Partners, reading grants and fundraising and has founded his own non-profit organization, Cans Help Others. He has attended summer band camps at NAU and University of Washington. His college choices include Harvey Mudd, Williams (Mass.), Carnegie Mellon, Stanford and Washington.
Kathy Garcia has done it all at Carl Hayden, while maintaining a 4.65 grade point average. She has been a member of the Robotics team, Computer club, Gaming club, National Honor Society, and is the yearbook editor-in-chief. She scored an impressive 34 composite score in her ACT College Entrance Exam. Last year, Garcia was selected as a recipient of the National Center for Women & Information Technology Award for Aspirations in Computing. She hopes to become a computer programmer and independent game developer. She is applying to Yale.
About 90% of semi-finalists become finalists, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC.) North had five National Merit Scholar Finalists last year and six others received NMSC Letters of Commendation. Since 1990, North has had 88 National Merit Scholarship Finalists and 102 Commended students. This year’s Commended students have not yet been announced.
Source: Phoenix Central High School District
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