Nearly 1-in-4 Cooper seniors get National Merit nods

(L to R) Neil Iyer, Alessandro Portela, Spencer Morris, Michelle Tiu, Cameron Friday (semi-finalist) and Daniel Clark

The John Cooper School announced that nearly 25 percent of its senior class received recognition from the National Merit Scholarship Program for academic performance.

Of the 78-member 2012 graduating class, five seniors -- Daniel Clark, Neil Iyer, Spencer Morris, Alessandro Portela and Michelle Tiu -- were named as finalists in the Merit Scholarship competition. Cameron Friday received recognition as a National Merit Semifinalist, and Chandler Abshire, Christina Bray, Nicholas Carlson, Sean Choksi, Clark Connett, Cody Guinn, Ellena Malek, Stephanie Manceor, Timesh Patel, Oliver Quintero, Taylor Schmidt, Mattias Turner and Neha Verma were all named Commended Scholars.

The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition providing scholarships to exceptional students throughout the U.S. Based on results from the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the program selects qualified students to participate in the competition from an initial pool of more than 1.5 million entrants. Only 15,000 total students are named Finalists.

The John Cooper School is an independent college-preparatory school located at 1 John Cooper Drive in The Woodlands. For more information, visit www.johncooper.org.