SHAWNEE TOWNSHIP — Seven local students are semi-finalists for the prestigious National Merit Scholarship.
Those students are Asa F. Clingerman, Bluffton; Grant Fortman and Robert Nartker, Kalida; Hailey Hinkle, Bath; and Evan B. Conley, Isaiah M. Gibson and Ava B. Patel, Shawnee.
More than 1.3 million high school juniors from 21,000 high schools entered the contest by taking the preliminary SAT or scholarship qualifying test.
Only 16,000 semi-finalists were chosen. Semifinalists must have an outstanding academic record throughout their high school careers.
Scholars must also be endorsed by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT or ACT scores to confirm their earlier performance on the qualifying test to advance to the semi-finalist round, according to scholarship rules.
Semi-finalist scholars will learn in February whether they will advance to the finalist level. An estimated 15,000 semi-finalists are expected to advance to the next round.
Scholarship winners are selected from this final pool of scholars, earning one of 2,500 $2,500 scholarships.
