WAIMEA — Alicia Chow, Tanner Riley and Thomas Yoo, seniors at Hawaii Preparatory Academy (HPA), are among six Big Island semifinalists in the 62nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.
Chow, Riley, and Yoo will continue in the competition for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth about $33 million to be offered next spring.
Chow, the daughter of Ivan Chow and Lynda Chao of Kamuela, is fluent in English, Mandarin and Spanish. She has initiated three self-directed research projects. In linguistics, she has studied Latin and translation theory independently and through Stanford’s summer program; in anthropology, she is analyzing and comparing various aspects of Hawaiian, Greek, and Roman mythologies; in information technology, she is evaluating the school’s current use of social media and offering suggestions for improvement.
Riley, the son of Bryan and Tara Riley of Kailua-Kona, is a dedicated member of HPA’s theater department and has had leading roles in a number of productions at the school. He has completed two Hilo marathons and the Maui Marathon as part of HPA’s training group. He currently is working on an independent project at the HPA Energy Lab, studying how sleep relates to memory in high school students. Riley has traveled extensively to the Philippines, Norway and England doing humanitarian work.
Yoo, the son of Sae Keun Yoo and Sun Won Moon of Seoul, Korea, is a dedicated member of the school’s cross-country team and theater department. He also is founder and president of the HPA Cultural Inquiries Club. He is fluent in English and Korean.
About 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.
Nearly 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
National Merit Scholarship winners of 2017 will be announced beginning in April and concluding in July.