Not chess... but close
Naomi is in the Seattle Times, again.
The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic scholarship competition for recognition and university scholarships. It uses the PSAT/NMSQT scores to select 16,000 Semifinalists (who become Finalists after submitting SAT scores) out of 1.5 million high school students.
The selection process is long (takes many months) and complicated (with state-dependent cutoffs), however the honor is real because Semifinalists are approximately the top 1%, and the program gives out some scholarship money.
From the Seattle Times article on WA National Merit Scholarship semifinalists:
- BELLEVUE -
Newport H.S.: Bashkansky, Naomi; Chen, Justin K.; Gao, Daniel; Hu, Daniel; Jain, Stuti; Jiang, Kelly; Kim, Athena Y.; Ma, Kenneth; McClelland, Kai L.; Ouyang, Diana; Pham, Leanne; Yang, Richard Z.; Zeng, Julia W.
One of the Semifinalists in her school, Richard Yang, is also a chess player. We've known him since he and Naomi were little. He played with Naomi on all her chess teams: Spiritridge ES, Odle MS, Newport HS, both locally and nationally.
From Naomi's 2015 Nashville Nationals chess team, three players became National Merit Semifinalists: Naomi, Richard Yang, Brian Chen (now at Interlake HS).
From Naomi's 2016 K-8 Indianapolis Nationals chess team, five players became National Merit Semifinalists: Naomi, Richard Yang, Brian Chen, and previous year Semifinalists Benjamin Mousseau and Derek Zhang.
As the xkcd.com/552 hover text says, "Correlation doesn't imply causation, but it does waggle its eyebrows suggestively and gesture furtively while mouthing 'look over there'."
