Every year, high school juniors are taking the rigorous Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to earn the chance for scholarship money to attend college. Less than 1 percent of students will become a semifinalist, and even less make it to the final round.The prestigious National Merit Scholarship Program has announced the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists for 2023 including those in the Lake Houston area.
According to Eileen Artemakis, executive director of public information with the NMS program, “This is the first stage of the competition. The next step is for them to fill out an application and it will be reviewed. As long as they fulfill a specific set of requirements, they will move on to finalist standing and it’s from the finalist group that the scholarships are awarded,” she said.
Scholarships for the students are either underwritten by the NMSC with its own funds or by approximately 340 business organizations and higher education institutions that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.“Any of those students show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies,” she said, regardless of class standing.