Brooklyn Mire, a 17-year-old high school senior from New Iberia, was recently named a National Merit Semifinalist.
Mire, who attended Westgate High School through 11th grade before switching to the online virtual public charter school University View Academy as a senior, is the daughter of Cory and Trisha Mire. She is 17 years old.
Wanda Milliman, who taught Mire from seventh to 11th grade, said she was excited for her former pupil.
“(I’m) not surprised that she earned this honor,” Milliman said. “She always came to math class daring me to challenge her.”
Milliman said Mire studied Gifted Math at Anderson Middle School and Westgate and has a wonderful, supportive family.
Mire said she wanted more Advanced Placement dual enrollment classes than were available at WHS, prompting her switch to the online academy.
At WHS, Mire played softball as a freshman and sophomore, volleyball as a freshman and was in 4-H, Key Club, Renaissance Club and Tech Team.
She plans to attend the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and major in accounting. “It’s exciting,” she said of being a National Merit Semifinalist.
Because of her grades and ACT score she said she expects to have all her tuition fees covered in college.
More than 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program last fall by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state, acording to the National Merit Scholarship Program.
From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level. Scholarship winners are notified in the spring.