The National Merit Scholarship Program has announced its Finalists to be considered for National Merit Scholarships offered in 2018. The program has determined who of the 16,000 Semifinalists named in September 2017 have met all requirements to advance to the next stage of the competition.

The following Mason City Schools students were named Finalists in the 2018 competition: Sudarsana Addepalli, Dariah Ansari, Saagar Chokshi, Lauren Elliott, Anna Estes, Alexander Gao, Wei Gao, Lauren Han, Thomas Hayama, Jeffrey Huang, Natalee Jobert, Arjan Kalra, Preetham Kastury, Mujtaba Khalid, Suraj Komatineni, Sydnie Kong, Ryan Kouche, James Krueger, Jack Li, Terry Luo, Rishi Mehta, Connie Mi, Olivia Min, Rishav Mukherjee, Atneya Nair, Ishani PAul, Ranjani Ramasubramanian, Rahul Ramesh, David Sun, Suraj Suresh, Noah Trenaman, Jenny Wan, Alex Wang, Hengyi Wang, Linda Wang, Ryan Winterhalter, Joyce Wu, Catherine Xu, and Peter Zhu.

The selection of some 7,500 Merit Scholarship winners from the group of more than 15,000 Finalists is now in progress. Winners will be contacted in March, and scholarships worth more than $32 million will be offered this spring.

In the fall, a record number 39 MHS students were named National Merit Semifinalists, and 43 MHS seniors were named Commended Students in the National Merit Scholarship Program.  Watch the video produced by Integrated Media Students that included advice from MHS teachers to celebrate the students' achievement.