Congratulations to seven Fort Zumwalt seniors for their outstanding academic accomplishments.

East High’s Reese Jones, North High’s Caleb Fick and Brendan Hoffmann, South High’s Akshat Nadella and Kassandra Shepherd and West High’s Matthew Armstrong and Satya Sivasankar will be honored at a luncheon in Columbia as members of the Missouri Association of Secondary School Principals Missouri Scholars 100.

The selection is based primarily on a formula using the student’s grade point average and ACT or SAT score. Each student nominated had to first meet criteria of an “Academic Decathlon,” which included 10 “events” designed to assure the academic strength of the student.

To meet the decathlon requirements, the student must have a minimum GPA of 3.750, a minimum ACT score of 29 or a minimum SAT score of 1,600, be ranked in the upper 10 percent of the class, and have taken upper level courses in mathematics, science, English, and foreign language. The student must also have excellent attendance, be an exemplary school citizen, and be involved in the school activity program.

Armstrong, Fick and Sivasankar are National Merit Finalists. Fewer than 1 percent of the 1.6 million high school students who took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) last year reach finalist status. They, along with Celeste O’Brien (North); Aravind Kalathil and Katie Whitmore (South); and Aliyah Amerin, Malia Johnson and Bennett Nelson (West) await word on scholarship awards.

Armstrong, Fick and Jones each scored a perfect 36 on the ACT. And Sivasankar received the Award for Excellence in Research, recognition from the UMSL Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS) program for his work during the summer program last year. Sivasankar worked with Dr. Sam Wang of the University of Missouri-St. Louis on the paper “An analysis of the role of phospholipase Dε in autophagy and growth of soybean (Glycine max) plants under nitrogen deprivation.”