National Merit finalists

Champion High School Seniors Ethan Thornton and Halle Vandersloot have been named 2022 National Merit Scholarship finalists by the College Board. The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition that recognizes students for their outstanding performance on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Thornton and Vandersloot are among 15,000 students in the United States who qualified as finalists, which places them in the top 1 percent of all students nationwide who completed the PSAT. Typically, more than 1.5 million students in about 21,000 high schools enter the National Merit Scholarship Program each year. Thornton will attend MIT after graduation and Vandersloot will head to Texas A&M. Submitted photos