The 52nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program named two Community School students, Rachael Becker and Will Van Eaton, as National Merit semifinalists this week. The Community School seniors are two of only 93 students in Idaho to reach the semifinalist level.
Both students earned an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,200 Merit Scholarships, worth $33 million, to be awarded next spring.
The students qualified for the award by taking the 2005 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test during their junior years.
In addition to their scores, the semifinalists presented strong academic records, recommendations from the principal and SAT scores that confirmed their qualifying test scores.
The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than 1 percent of high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.