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Seventeen seniors from District 202 high schools have been named “commended” students in the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program. The National Merit Scholarship Program is a national competition organized by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation to recognize and reward academic achievement.
While these students will not move forward in the 2026 competition for scholarships, they are among about 34,000 Commended Students nationwide recognized for their academic promise. According to program guidelines, Commended Students scored among the top 50,000 out of more than 1.3 million entrants who took the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
The District 202 students honored as “National Merit Scholarship Commended Students” include representatives from all four high schools:
From Plainfield High School – Central Campus: Sean Salkas.
From Plainfield South High School: Arianna Stewart.
From Plainfield North High School: Haidarah Al-Shaheen, Lily Allen, Rebecca Choate, Malachi Henningsgaard, Christopher Henry, Sean Jansen, Ifeoluwa Olanrewaju, Daniel Smith, Sydney Sullivan, Akshith Vasa, Chloe Vasilakis, Andy Yuen, and Emma Yuen.
From Plainfield East High School: Aleena Yousuf and Beatrice Alexa Ordeneza.
Plainfield East High School serves grades nine through twelve and had an enrollment of 2,162 students during the 2019-2020 school year. The school is located in Plainfield and Will County. Demographic data from that year shows that its student body was composed of approximately 42 percent white students, nearly 26 percent Hispanic students, about 16 percent black students, and roughly 11 percent Asian students (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/).
Of the total student population at Plainfield East High School during that period, around one-quarter were enrolled in grade twelve (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/School.aspx?schoolid=560992020220004). Grade ten had the highest proportion of students at nearly twenty-five percent (https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/School.aspx?schoolid=560992020220004).
