After completing their PSATs at Milford High School, seniors Michael Jauch and Ashley Yeager were named as part of the nation’s top 1 percent of students.

Yeager and Jauch were honored as National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists for the 2006-2007 school year.

“My family was thrilled for me and a little surprised. No one expected me to be a semifinalist, since this is a nationwide scholarship,” Yeager said.

After an application process and testing last October as juniors, they received notification of being narrowed down to semifinalists in September and now they wait to hear further results on the final decisions about the scholarship, said Jauch, who is a member of the National Honor Society and the high school Academic Quiz Team.

“We’re not sure when we’ll hear something – but it’s really exciting and a chance for scholarship money to pay for school,” said Yeager, who wants to attend Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. “I want to go into international politics,” she said.

“I have worked with them both (Yeager and Jauch) on different projects and I have found them to possess character traits that match their intellectual capacity to help them attain success in whatever direction they pursue beyond high school,” Bauer said.

Jauch, a guitarist for the high school jazz band, who is “undecided” for a major has a long list of universities that he is considering at this point, he said. “I like Rice University and Case Western Reserve University – and I enjoy math, physics and philosophy,” he said about his future possible career choices.

“Michael and Ashley are outstanding students in every sense of the word. Not only are they dedicated to the pursuit of academic excellence, but they are active in extracurricular activities to complete a well-rounded education at Milford,” said Ray Bauer, Milford High School principal.

Yeager, with a 4.0 grade point average is the editor in chief of the Reflector, Milford High School’s newspaper, and a member of the National Honor Society.

“The quality of teachers in the Milford school system (are what prepared me for this scholarship),” Yeager said. “The teachers put in so much effort for me to understand the materials.”

In fact, Jauch took the test his sophomore year, the earliest you can take the PSATs, and scored just below what he needed to be a semifinalist, he said. “I had a pretty good idea that I would be a semifinalist this time – I read a lot and that helps with the verbal and reading questions,” said Jauch.

The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that started in 1955. Students take the preliminary test or the PSAT, that is administered initially to about 1.4 million students nationwide.

From those tests, Milford High School students Bradley Bailey, Michael Bucci, Jordan Burger, Shannon Majoras and Erin Obernier were also honored as commended students the this school year.

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