Sierra Lutheran students honored for National Merit, College Board awards

Sierra Lutheran High School celebrated several students for outstanding academic performance this month.

Junior Nathan Tack has been selected as a 2025 National Merit Scholarship semifinalist and was recognized by his school on Oct. 2 and students Mylie Christenson, Tanner Olsen and Morgan de la Torre, seniors, and junior Mason Soracco, received College Board National Recognition awards.

Tack was chosen among more than 16,000 scholars nationwide who will continue to compete for $26 million in college scholarships to be awarded next spring. Morgan de la Torre was named Commended Student.

“I was really, really excited for the opportunities it would offer me, especially with the scholarships and such, and it would pay for school, pay for my future,” he said.

Asked about his plans after Sierra Lutheran, he already has college in mind.

“The dream school is Stanford, but obviously everyone’s got to be a little lucky to get in there,” he said. “But my fallback is (the University of Nevada, Reno) because they have a National Merit finalist scholarship as well, and with that, I would actually be going to UNR completely free, which would be really nice.”

Tack is considering a chemistry major possibly to enter pharmacology and eventually work in the development of drugs or something similar, he said.

“I’ve had a great chemistry teacher here at Sierra, which really sparked my interest in chemistry,” he said.

Tack also was recognized through the National Rural and Small Town Recognition Program in 2023 as a junior.

Christenson was recognized through the College Board’s National Rural and Small Town Recognition Program. Olsen was recognized through its National Hispanic Recognition Program, and Soracco won the Rural National Recognition Program award.

Tack and de la Torre are among more than 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools nationwide who entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary Scholarship Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screening of program entrants.

A nationwide pool of semifinalists — representing less than 1% of high school seniors in the United States — includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist and move forward in the scholarship competition, semifinalists must submit a detailed scholarship application with information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, honors and awards received.

Each semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. will consider submissions and select approximately 15,000 finalists, who then will be notified of their selection in February. These finalists will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit Scholarships valued at $2,500, about 770 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships and about 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarships for finalists who will attend the sponsor institution.

Sierra Lutheran head of school Pastor Micah Glenn called it a “proud moment” to recognize the outstanding students.

“It’s a testimony of two things: one, the dedication of our teachers and their talent and abilities to shape and form our students to not only comprehend the different topics that are necessary for high school students, but also to take it seriously for themselves and for their lives,” Glenn said. “But then it’s also the ability and talent of our students … our student body is just so remarkable in their core and their values and their ethics.”

Glenn, who was hired this summer to fill the school’s top position, said he’s still getting to know all of the students and has been enjoying the experience.

“I feel like I can never brag about my student body enough,” he said.