Last Wednesday afternoon, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced its roughly 16,000 semifinalists.

The list included Manhattan High seniors Spencer Parish, Cathy Lei, Joshua Schwartz and Nathan McClendon.

The not-for-profit organization awards approximately 7,400 scholarships each year worth more than $32 million total each year to “academically talented” U.S. high school seniors, and semifinalists make up less than one percent of the group. As juniors, they took the Preliminary SAT and scored high enough to be included in the program. McClendon anticipates the competition to be tight for the Finalist stage.

“The whole thing, it seems like it’s going to be pretty competitive,” McClendon said. “Every single person in the country, the 14,000 or whatever, all are going to write good essays; they’re all going to have transcripts. I guess just finding a way to separate myself from them will be the tricky part.”

The four semifinalists from MHS haven’t made specific efforts toward being included in the program, as Schwartz explained.

“All we’ve done so far is take the PSAT and score high enough,” Schwartz said. “Now we have to take the SAT and write an essay.”

Now that they’re through to the Semifinalist stage, the seniors must be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test to become Finalists. About 15,000 of the 16,000 Semifinalists will become Finalists, who will be notified of their promotion in February, according to the organization.

The scholarships will be awarded in the spring, and they will come in three types. Each Finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit Scholarships worth $2500 each; about 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships will be provided by approximately 250 corporations and business organizations; and about 190 colleges and universities are expected to finance approximately 3,900 college-sponsored Merit Scholarships for Finalists who will attend the sponsor institution, according to the organization.

McClendon said he’s hopeful to advance to the Finalist stage.

“For the first cut, yeah [I’m feeling good about advancing],” McClendon said. “I hope so.”