Barney tests his way to the top

By Matthew Shanbom, Editor-in-Chief

Senior Sean Barney was announced as the school’s lone semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship Program on Sept. 9. Barney credits the school’s Friday PSAT review sessions, led by literacy coach Ann Wayland Coach and former math teacher Alan Gates, for his success.

“I went to these review sessions every Friday for eight weeks,” Barney said. “At the very least, it gave me exposure to the test into the type of questions.”

In addition to earning a high score on the PSAT, the qualification process involves an application with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

“You also have to write an essay,” Barney said. “It’s a very vague prompt where you talk about something that impacted you … I talked about my brother.”

Barney hopes to go into computer science in college.

“In eighth grade, I wanted to switch out of a class,” Barney said. “And the most accessible class was this coding class.”

Barney then continued his passion for coding in high school by taking the computer science magnet track.

“Once I went into high school, I’d already kind of had this little thing for coding,” Barney said. “And after doing that … seeing that I was good at it, I was like ‘yeah I want to do something with this.’”

Barney hopes to then apply this knowledge to programming cars.

“One of the most important things in the car is the ECU (engine control unit), basically the computer in the car,” Barney said. “I think it’d be interesting to program those things.”

While Barney has been thinking about what he wants to go into in college, he hasn’t let the question of where he’s going escape him.

“Primarily, I think I would want to go to UF because they (are) one of the best schools in Florida,” Barney said.

Barney has also stated that he is applying to MIT and Georgia Tech as reach schools.