In the car, alongside her family, senior Caroline Brown startled everyone with a scream of excitement as she received the need. Brown became a National Merit Scholar Semi-finalist. Brown joins the less than one percent of high school students to be named finalists. 

“I screamed and drove my dog crazy,” Brown said. “I was crying for a lot of reasons that day because it was just such a shock that I got this and I was freaking out.”

As Brown recounts the event, she remembers high emotions as she received the news. Alongside her in the moment of excitement, her twin sister, Camilla Brown, experienced the accomplishment with her.

“Getting that news made our entire day,” Camilla Brown said. “I am so happy for her and she really deserves it. I know she has worked extremely hard and put in a lot of practice and effort into it herself. I am happy to be alongside her through this and I can’t wait to see what she does.”

The process begins with a qualifying score on the PSAT during a student’s junior year, and then an application process of a holistic view of the student to achieve the scholar status.

“There’s a list of things I have to do to talk about my grades and my extracurriculars,” Brown said. “I’m really thankful to the Legacy administrators for working with me on this because they have to do a ton of work as well to make sure that I’m ready for this.”

Brown will now work with the counselors to complete numerous applications required to become a finalist. The application process takes a few months to be notified of her consideration to become a finalist and will then offer her the opportunity to become a National Merit Scholar.

“It’s always great to see the programs we have here at Legacy to prepare us for the PSAT that helped make this possible,” Brown said. “All those practice tests and activities we do outside of school, all of them contributed towards this.”