Congratulations to Elise Johnson, Sam Tannen and Eleanor Ward (ETHS), and Claire O’Shaughnessy (Loyola), who are 2020 National Merit Semifinalists!

Each of these high school seniors (all from the St. Athanasius Class of 2016) has an opportunity to continue on and compete for one of 7,000 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $31 million, offered next spring to students across the U.S.

To be considered, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition. To start, over 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT).

The pool of semifinalists, announced on Sept. 11, represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.