16 West High seniors were named National Merit semifinalists Sept. 9, placing them among the highest-scoring students on the Preliminary SAT or National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in Iowa.

West High’s semifinalists are Erin Chen, Shannon Chen, Benjamin Donald, Hannah Geng, Alice Gooblar-Perovic, Aahana Gupta, Faisal Hamzeh, Aaron Kang, Henry Lawler, Sharon Liao, Jensen Lin, Mingmei Lumetta, Alex Rouwenhorst, Rial Shriver, Broderick Young and Aiden Zhang.

The National Merit Scholarship Program selected more than 16,000 semifinalists nationwide from approximately 1.6 million students who took the PSAT and NMSQT. Semifinalists represent the top 0.5% of U.S. high school seniors and are selected based on their scores within their respective states.

The semifinalists can now apply to become National Merit finalists. Applicants will submit essays and information about extracurriculars and awards. Finalists are eligible to compete for the $2,500 National Merit Scholarship, along with corporate-sponsored scholarships.

Despite excitement, Gooblar-Perovic doesn’t believe that the award defines recipients.

“I was gone when they told everyone, so I got an email from my counselor, and I was pretty excited,” Gooblar-Perovic said. “Although I don’t think something based on one test score says much about somebody.”

However, Gooblar-Perovic hopes that the process will open doors past high school.

“Hopefully it’ll help me get a scholarship for college,” Gooblar-Perovic said. “Depending on how the process goes, it could make a big difference in where I decide to go.”

Finalists will be announced in early February, with scholarships being declared in four nationwide releases from April through July.

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