Two Wakefield seniors have been recognized in the 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program based on their results from the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying Test. Juliet Mayer has been recognized as a semifinalist and also earned a perfect score of 2400 on her SATs. Mayer is one of about 16,000 high school seniors recognized at this level, the top 1 percent of scorers on the PSAT. She will continue in the competition for some 8,000 National Merit Scholarships to be offered next spring.

Tish Johnston has been also been recognized as a Commended Student in the National Merit Scholarship Program, one of about 34,000 students throughout the nation. These Commended Students placed in the top 5 percent of the more than 1.5 million students who took the PSAT qualifying test.

Mayer has attended Wakefield School since first grade. She is Vice President of the National Honor Society, has served as editor-in-chief of both the school's literary magazines, and plays varsity soccer.

She hopes to major in Biology and Classics in college and pursue an M.D. or M.D./Ph.D. combination.

This past summer, Mayer interned at the National Institutes of Health. She was one of about 1,000 high school and college students selected from more than 7,000 applicants. For six weeks, she performed molecular biology research under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Martin. She has also attended the Virginia Governor's School for Life Sciences and Medicine, the Institute for Human Genetics at Duke University, and taken a college-level Neuroscience course at the Center for Talented Youth at Johns Hopkins.

Johnston serves as her class representative in the Student Government Association, is President of the National Honor Society and participates in Model UN and Harvard Model Congress. She is captain of the varsity field hockey team.

This past summer, Johnston took college-level courses in international relations and sociology at Stanford University: Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention; and the Sociological Complexities of Human Trafficking. She is interested in pursuing women's studies.