Five 12th-grade students Keystone School have been selected amongst 16,000 semifinalists in the nation’s 53rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

The students are Michael Acevedo, Sara Clark, Matthew Fairbank, Walker Holahan, and Jonathan Rodriguez. These seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition and earn some 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth $34 million, that will be offered in the spring of 2008.

“There’s a spirit of excellence in learning at Keystone,” said Hugh McIntosh, head of Keystone School. “Our five semifinalists are examples of the academic success and well-rounded achievement that this school aims to foster.”

The 16,000 semifinalists were selected from more than 1.4 million juniors in nearly 21,000 high schools, who entered the NMSP by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test during the end of their junior year. The nationwide pool of semifinalists includes the highest scoring entrants from each state, representing less than one-percent of U.S. high school seniors. 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 high school academic record, be endorsed and recommended by their principal and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance. They must also submit a detailed scholarship application, including a self-descriptive essay and information about their participation and leadership in school and community activities.

Approximately 90 percent of the semifinalists will be selected as finalists, and more than half of the finalists will be offered a Merit Scholarship award. The Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July 2008.

The NMSC was established in 1955 as a not-for-profit organization to conduct the annual National Merit Program. Scholarships awarded through the program are underwritten by NMSC’s own funds and by approximately 500 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