St. Mary’s Ryken High School is proud to announce that two students have achieved Commended Student status in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
Seniors Emily Grace of Great Mills., Md., and Clare Tennant of Hollywood, Md., earned Commended status, which means they are among the top 3% of more than 1.5 million high school students who entered the competition by taking the PSAT (Preliminary SAT)/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
Earlier this year, Emily Grace took first place in the St. Mary’s County Fair High School Speech Contest and was named second runner up in the Queen of Tolerance competition. She is a member of the SMR choir and regularly performs in the spring musical. This past summer, she was a winner in the National Society of the Colonial Dames of America essay contest and received full tuition to the organization’s Washington Workshops Congressional Seminar in June.
Clare Tennant is a flautist with the SMR concert band and has received numerous accolades in music competitions including a score of one (1) – the highest score one can receive – from the Maryland Music Educators Association as a soloist. In addition to flute, she plays piccolo and, for the past two years, has been chosen to perform with the Washington Archdiocese Music Teachers Council Honor Band.
Both Clare and Emily are members of the Theodore Ryken Chapter of the National Honor Society and the SMR chapter of the Tri-M Music Honors Society.
St. Mary’s Ryken is one of 13 Xaverian Brothers Sponsored Schools in the United States. The years a student spends at a Xaverian school are marked not only by college preparatory, challenging academics, but also by rewarding opportunities for service, the forming of lifelong friendships, the camaraderie of athletics and shared celebrations of faith. To prepare students to take their place in a world that is increasingly global and continually changing, St. Mary’s Ryken has developed several, unique learning programs: X-PAX; SMR STEM 100; and the 1:1 iPad program. To learn more, please visit www.smrhs.org.
