The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has announced that Baylor seniors Creighton Arrington, Alyssa Kim, and Sophie Peirano are semifinalists in the 66th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.
These talented seniors are among approximately 16,000 high school students who have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million that will be offered next spring. Two Baylor boarding students, Matthew An and Dake Peng, and one former Baylor boarder, Erica Wu, qualified as semifinalists but, as international students, are not eligible for the scholarship competition.
Over 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2019 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. From the approximately 16,000 Semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.
Forty-seven Baylor seniors have qualified as NMSC semifinalists in the last 10 years.