Three Homer High School seniors qualified as National Merit Scholarship finalists this year after taking their PSAT — a common standardized test for students thinking of going to college — and completing a demanding application. That's an honor bestowed to just over 15,000 top scorers out of over a million test takers, or about 1% of students.
Standardized tests are nothing new to students across Alaska, as the state uses them to measure a student’s academic progress. But, getting three finalists for the National Merit Scholarship in one year from a school the size of Homer High is uncommon. The school has 335 students, with 84 students in its graduating class. This is just the fourth time this has happened at the school since 2000. In addition to qualifying to compete for National Merit Scholarships, being a finalist also opens doors up for scholarships at numerous colleges and universities.
Homer High School Senior Spencer Co was one of the finalists. He said the overall curriculum at HHS helped set him up for success.
“The classes at Homer High School and all of those have definitely been, like, directly preparation for this kind of thing,” he said, “it doesn't go much further than like what we need to know in some of our classes, especially since we've, like, taken an upper level math classes.”
Co became a finalist in February alongside his peers, Blaise Banks and Lucas Story. Co and Story will attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology this fall. Banks is waiting to hear back from Stanford, but has already received a full ride scholarship to Washington State University because of his finalist status.
“I didn't really expect to get anything out of it and getting full tuition out of it seems, honestly, kind of ridiculous, but I'll take it,” he said.
All three students currently plan on studying engineering or computer science in college. Story said being able to take advanced courses from people like physics teacher Jan Spurkland prepared them well for applying to schools.
“We have a really great physics teacher, great physics class,” Story said, “and he's also teaching computer science, which I think was instrumental in getting Spencer and I accepted in MIT, because having a background in computer science is becoming increasingly important, especially for engineering.”
On top of classes though, each student in their graduating class needs to complete 30 hours of community service as part of their school requirements.
Banks and Story volunteered with youth sports programs to fill their requirements. Story said coaching for soccer and basketball was fun and rewarding.
“Growing up, coming through these programs you have high schoolers coming down and helping you and they're always people that you can look up to,” he said, “and so it's cool to be able to go down and be the person that those kids are looking up to now.”
Instead of focusing on one or two programs, Co completed his hours through a variety of volunteer opportunities. He also took advantage of all the extracurriculars the school offered, from being the student council president to competing with the school’s speech and debate team.
“Homer High School, aside from just, like, sports, and the community service also has a lot of really great, like, clubs and activities, which I know I've definitely involved myself in,” he said.
Homer High School’s class of 2024 will graduate May 14.
