Congratulations to our 2021 National Merit® Scholarship Program Semifinalist, Katherine Conway’21, and to our Commended Students, Abigail Auty’21, Angelina Casale’21, Katherine Mackey’21, Daniela Makowka’21, Freya Nair’21, Mary Virginia Nye’21, Elizabeth Spizzo’21, and Sarah Zampino’21.

In September 2020, National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) officials announced the names of approximately sixteen thousand Semifinalists in the 66th annual National Merit® Scholarship Program who earned a national Selection Index qualifying score of at least 220. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some seven thousand six hundred National Merit® Scholarships worth more than $30 million that will be offered next spring. To be considered for a Merit Scholarship® award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. More than 90 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and more than half of the Finalists will win a National Merit® Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title.

More than 1.5 million juniors in about twenty-one thousand high schools entered the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screening of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. Congratulations to Katherine Conway’21 for earning this prestigious honor.

About thirty-four thousand of the fifty thousand high scorers in each annual National Merit Scholarship® program are named Commended Students based on a national Selection Index qualifying score. This year, that score was 209. Congratulations to our eight outstanding seniors who received official Letters of Commendation!