{"id":34846,"date":"2025-05-10T18:11:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-10T18:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/?p=34846"},"modified":"2025-05-10T18:11:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-10T18:11:50","slug":"whs-students-recognized-by-national-merit-and-college-board-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/?p=34846","title":{"rendered":"WHS Students Recognized  by National Merit and College Board Programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><em>Westfield High School 12th grader Garrett Gao has advanced as a finalist in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program, having met academic and other standards to become eligible for scholarships. The selection of 7,100 Merit Scholarship winners from the group of more than 15,000 finalists nationwide is now in progress with scholarship winners and National Merit Scholars to be announced over the next few months.<\/em><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34847\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34847\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34847\" src=\"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-College-Board-Recognitions.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"700\" height=\"601\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-College-Board-Recognitions.jpeg 700w, https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-College-Board-Recognitions-300x258.jpeg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34847\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Fifteen WHS students were honored by the National College Board Recognition Program, which recognizes strong academic performances of students who belong to communities historically underrepresented on college campuses. (L-R) WHS Acting Principal William Loughran, Julianne Robinson, Sofia Basaldua, Eden Forbes (kneeling), Gabriella Mercado, Matthew Zheng, Anna Luchsinger, Madison Tacktikos (kneeling), Andres Philips Vazquez. Not pictured: Seth Bekker, Sebastian Carera, Jacob Correa, Niolas Lukis, Jorge Mendoza, Canya Nematadzira, Sean Rau.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_34849\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-34849\" style=\"width: 486px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-National-Merit-Finalist.Garrett-Gao.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"486\" height=\"700\" class=\"size-full wp-image-34849\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-National-Merit-Finalist.Garrett-Gao.jpeg 486w, https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/WPS-National-Merit-Finalist.Garrett-Gao-208x300.jpeg 208w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 486px) 100vw, 486px\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-34849\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Westfield High School 12th grader Garrett Gao is a 2025 National Merit Finalist. Pictured here with WHS Acting Principal William Loughran.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Photo Credit:  Westfield High School<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Westfield High School 12th grader Garrett Gao has advanced as a finalist in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program, having met academic and other standards to become eligible for scholarships. The selection of 7,100 Merit Scholarship winners from the group of more than 15,000 finalists nationwide is now in progress with scholarship winners and National [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,151],"tags":[],"post_flags":[],"class_list":["post-34846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-westfield-local"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34852,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34846\/revisions\/34852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34846"},{"taxonomy":"post_flag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.localmedianj.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fpost_flags&post=34846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}