National Merit semifinalists announced

| October 4, 2011 9:00 PM

There are eight local high school seniors on the 2012 list of semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

National Merit semifinalists rank among the top 1 percent of high school seniors nationwide, and represent the highest scorers in their state.

The eight National Merit semifinalists:

Coeur d'Alene Charter Academy - Lilly Bonasera, Jacob Shapiro, Mitchell Shellman, Katie Waltar;

Coeur d'Alene High School - Donald Sutton, Joel Wasserman;

Lake City High School - Jennifer Brooks, Tabatha Poelstra.

Students are selected as National Merit semifinalists based on their scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test (PSAT)/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which they take as juniors. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation reports about 1.5 million students in nearly 22,000 U.S. high schools took the test last year.

Of 16,000 national semifinalists, 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level, and in February they will be notified of the designation. As finalists, they will compete for scholarships.