One Hundred Twenty-Four Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

One hundred twenty-four students from 14 high schools have been named semifinalists in the 53rd National Merit Scholarship competition.

The local students will compete with about 16,000 semifinalists nationally for some 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth $34 million, that will be offered next spring.

Montgomery Blair, Richard Montgomery, Walt Whitman and Thomas S. Wootton high schools surpassed all other schools in the state in number of semifinalists.

The MCPS high schools and number of semifinalists from each are:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase: 4
Montgomery Blair: 43
James Hubert Blake: 1
Winston Churchill: 9
Clarksburg: 1
Albert Einstein: 1
Gaithersburg: 3
Walter Johnson: 7
John F. Kennedy: 1
Richard Montgomery: 26
Quince Orchard: 2
Sherwood: 1
Walt Whitman: 12
Thomas S. Wootton: 13

The semifinalists were selected from more than 1.4 million juniors from high schools around the nation who were top scorers on the 2006 PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. About 90 percent of the semifinalists will advance to finalist status, based on criteria such as academic record, recommendations, SAT performance, and leadership.

Finalists will be considered for one of the 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships. In addition, corporations and businesses will provide about 1,100 corporate-sponsored scholar-ships, and 200 or so colleges and universities are expected to finance about 4,600 Merit scholarships.