Local National Merit semifinalists named

Students from several area high schools are among the 16,000

semifinalists in the 56th annual National Merit Scholarship Program

announced this week.

These high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the

competition for some 8,400 National Merit Scholarships, worth more

than $36 million. Scholarships will announced in the spring.

Kootenai County semifinalists include:

Timberlake High School, Spirit Lake: Hailey Knox.

Post Falls High School: Jamie Walker

Coeur d'Alene High School: Lauren Cohen, Nicholas Induni, Matthew

Lambert, and Taylor Stewart.

Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy: Brady Rinaldi, Steven Hallgren, James

George, and Lewis Ellis.

There were no semifinalists from Lake City or Lakeland high schools.

Approximately 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the

finalist level and it is from this group that all National Merit

Scholarship winners will be chosen.

About 1.5 million juniors in some 22,000 high schools entered the 2011

National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2009 Preliminary

SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The nationwide pool of

semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. 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.

To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic

record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the high

school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s

earlier performance on the qualifying test. The semifinalist and a

high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application,

which includes the student’s essay and information about the

semifinalist’s participation and leadership in school and community

activities.