Three Foxcroft School students achieved the rare status of National Scholar to lead a record-setting group of 32 girls who earned 2018 Advanced Placement Scholar Awards for outstanding achievement on AP Exams, Academic Dean Courtney Ulmer announced recently.

Current senior Sylvia Yuan of Ningbo, China, and May 2018 graduates Melanie Fann of Purcellville, VA, who attends Vanderbilt University, and Emma Schmidt, a Warrenton, VA, resident attending the College of William & Mary, were among a select group — just 2.3 percent of the 2.8 million students who took AP Exams last May — of National AP Scholars. This is the second consecutive year that Foxcroft has had three National Scholars, who must achieve an average grade of at least 4 on all AP Exams taken and grades of 4 or higher on eight or more of the tests.

Worldwide, only about 22 percent of the 2.2 million students who took AP Exams last May performed well enough to earn AP Scholar designation but Foxcroft's average is much higher: More than half of all the students in the Class of 2018 and nearly a quarter of the Class of 2019 were recognized for high achievement. The number of Foxcroft AP Scholars reached double digits for the 14th consecutive year— an impressive feat for such a small school.

Fann, Schmidt and Yuan were joined by current seniors Chloe Green of Leesburg and Kayla Lee of Austin, TX, and six members of the Class of 2018 in receiving AP Scholars of Distinction awards for achieving an average of at least 3.5 on all exams taken and scores of 3 or higher on at least five of them. The recent graduates are Emma Cao (Emory University), Elisa Chen (University of Virginia), Saylor Hart (Wake Forest), Hyeri Woo (University of Southern California), Zoey Xu (University of California, San Diego) and Yiming Zhao (Boston University) are the graduate honorees.

Their classmates Abby Jones (Northeastern University), Sumi Lee (George Washington University) and Renee Xie (Parsons School of Design/The New School), and current seniors Grace MacDonald (Bluemont, VA) and Grace Chen (Nanjing, China) received AP Scholars with Honor awards. They achieved scores of 3 or better on at least four tests with an average of 3.25 on all exams taken.

Ten seniors and six graduates collected AP Scholar honors for scoring 3 or higher on three or more AP Exams. Current students are Elizabeth Burns (Front Royal, VA), Amanda Clemente (Reston, VA), Sarah Elihow (West Palm Beach, FL), Lily Fortsch (Alexandria, VA), Anne Kickert (Leesburg), Clair Newton (Leesburg), May Schulte (Middleburg), Jenna Torrance (Leesburg), Wendy Xiu (Qingdao, China), and Annie Zimmerman (Haymarket, VA). 2018 graduates Rachel Brown (Colgate University) Morgan Hunt (University of Tampa), Connie Kang (Boston University), Anna Nottage (University of Miami), Pradyuta Padmanabhan (University of Pittsburgh), and Pia Scharfenberg (University of Texas) round out the list.