For Immediate Release • September 15, 2005
Terren Roloff, Director
Community Relations
Phone: 354-7338

National Merit Semifinalists Announced

Seven Spokane Public Schools students are among the roughly 16,000 semifinalists in the 51st annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seniors Dylan M. Versteeg of Ferris High School; Lauren R. Boubel, Whitney Fish, Clifton Caleb Jewett and Kyl B. Wellman of Lewis and Clark High School; and Samuel J. Comi and Elizabeth J. Korsmo of Shadle Park High School now have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth $33 million, that will be offered next spring.

More than 1.3 million juniors from nearly 21,000 U.S. high schools entered the 2006 National Merit Program by taking the 2004 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The semifinalists, who represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, include the highest scoring entrants in each state. Seventeen semifinalists are from schools in Spokane County.

To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout the high school years, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student's earlier qualifying test performance. The semifinalist and a school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, which includes a self-descriptive essay and information about the semifinalist's participation and leadership in school and community activities.

Approximately 15,000 semifinalists will advance to the finalist level and it is from this group that all Merit Scholarship winners will be chosen.