The National Hispanic Recognition Program (NHPR) selected eight students to be National Hispanic Scholars this year, the largest number in school history. Every year, the NHPR recognizes about 5,000 of the 250,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors who take the PSAT.

“I feel real proud about [the National Hispanic Scholars],” principal Scot Finch said. “If you are part of a culture or race and that race does well, I think it’s something to celebrate and be grateful for. I hope that others see the hard work and maybe thought they couldn’t do something like that, but now that others before them have, they would take more of an interest in that.”

In the past, the school has had more African American Scholars than Hispanic, but this year an increased number of students received the National Hispanic Recognition. Among those are seniors Breanna Bleil, Alyssa Foy, Sabrina Gambini, Avery Rodriguez, Jacob Bray, Ross Sanchez, Diane Briceno and Hanna Flores.

“You have to be very studious, scholarly, and doing lots of work in middle school to get you on that path to be one of [the National Scholars],” Finch said. “Earning this honor wasn’t like it happened overnight and we should keep recognizing our students for their hard work.”

To be eligible, one must be at least one-fourth Hispanic/Latino, achieve the minimum required PSAT/NMSQT Selection Index score and earn a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher by the middle of his or her junior year.

“I was in the PSAT class at school, which helped boost my scores so much,” senior Alyssa Foy said. “It was both a class during the school day, but also had practice tests administered Saturdays. Of course, in order to prepare for this, I also had to keep up and do well in my other classes, because they consider GPA as well.”

This recognition is an academic honor and can be included on college applications. Although it’s not a scholarship, colleges do use this program to identify academically exceptional Hispanic/Latino students.

“My parents were really proud; I was happy and humbled,” Foy said. “It’s an excellent program to recognize Hispanic students, and think it’s great motivation to students to continue doing well in their studies in order to potentially become a National Hispanic Scholar.”