Seventeen High School students from the East Baton Rouge Parish School System have been announced as Semifinalists in the 2005 National Merit Scholarship Program.

The 2005 Semifinalists from EBR are:  Jin S., and Christine W. from McKinley High and Rohan B., Steven B., Andrew C., Raymond C., Elizabeth D., Anna H., Heather L., Emily M., Spencer M., Joyatee S., Steven S., Nabil T., Jacob T., Steven W., Henry Y. from Baton Rouge Magnet High School.

These EBRPSS students are among the 16,000 scholastically talented high school seniors who will compete for 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth $33.9 million, offered next spring.

About 90 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to become Finalists, and approximately half of the Finalists will be selected as Merit Scholarship winners.

More than 1.3 million juniors in nearly 21,000 U.S. high schools entered the 2005 National Merit Program by taking the 2003 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.  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 academic record of very high performance, be endorsed and recommended by the high 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 the student's self-descriptive essay and information about the Semifinalist's participation and leadership in school and community activities.