Emma Huber found out that she had been named a National Merit Finalist in February. She scored in the top percentile of the country on the PSAT she took her junior year leading her to becoming a semi-finalist. She then took the SAT and submitted an essay which asked her “What is central to who you are?”, in which she wrote about how her family is interested in a bunch of different kinds of food.

Soon afterward, during her senior year, she found out that she had been named a finalist. She would have been named a scholar, but she did not achieve this title because she did not declare the college she would be attending before the deadline. She has decided to attend Missouri University of Science and Technology in Rolla.

“Rolla is great for engineering. They focus on getting you a job and getting you prepared for going into the field you are studying, which is important,” Emma said. “Right now I’m looking at Biomedical Engineering. My initial interest is to develop prosthetics.”

Along with the multiple AP and honors classes Emma has taken at KHS, she has also participated in several extracurricular activities. She is an artist, participates in the crew for theater productions and was in the robotics club in her last two years of high school, becoming the team captain this year. Also, one thing that people automatically notice about Emma is the blue color of her hair. Her sister, Clare Huber, sophomore, said that she was happy when she found out about her sister becoming a National Merit finalist, and she elaborated on her sister’s hair color.

“I personally do not think hair color is a reflection of your intelligence,” Clare said. “It definitely gets a lot of attention from people. It’s good attention.”

In order for Emma to be considered as a National Merit finalist, she had to have letters of recommendation from her college counselor and two teachers. Josh Jaworowski, college counselor, said he enjoyed getting the opportunity to write the letter for Emma.

“It was a unique letter for me to write because I had Emma as a student for three years [as an engineering teacher] prior to having her this year as a college counselor,” Jaworowski said. “I knew that she was extremely gifted, a very good problem solver and that she has a great analytical mind. My goal in the letter for Emma was to write on one page a story that if you picked it up and read it, you would think, ‘Wow, this is Emma Huber.’”