The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC®) recently released the names of the 69th annual National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists who have been officially named finalists.

This year’s National Merit semifinalists from the Bolles Class of 2024 – Isabel Bassin ’24, Daniel Ji ’24, Alex Meyers-Labenz ’24, William Schilling ’24, Aryan Shah ’24 and Ashkon Shirazi ’24 – are now finalists in the annual competition.

The students will continue in the competition for some 7,140 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $28 million that will be offered in the spring. More than 1.3 million juniors from about 21,000 high schools around the country entered the 2024 scholarship program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, also known as the PSAT/NMSQT®. That test served as an initial screen of program entrants. The semifinalists represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors.

To become a finalist, semifinalists submitted a detailed scholarship application, in which they provided information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards received. They must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. More than 90 percent of semifinalists usually attain finalist standing.