The officials of the National Merit Scholar Corporation announced that Manhattan High has six students that are going to be recognized as being a Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist that they announced on the 12th. The six seniors that are being acknowledged are Richard Brown, Jacob Clanton, Stephanie Fu, Creighton Glasscock, Luann Jung and Leon Li.

“Manhattan High always has a group of students who represent our school well,” Michael Dorst, senior principal, said.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation is a privately funded, non-profit organization that holds an academic competition throughout the U.S. that awards high school students by granting them recognition and a chance at receiving a college scholarship.

Nearly 1.5 million students from around 22,000 high schools take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test that determines their knowledge on writing, problem-solving for mathematics and critical reading abilities that all remaining students have to take. From the 1.5 million students enrolled in the program, the corporation selects 16,000 semifinalists. This September, they announced the Semifinalists and in February they will announce the finalists after they submit an application that includes the students’ grades, extracurricular clubs and sports that they are involved in and an essay about themselves and take another SAT test.

The finalists of the program are recognized as Merit Scholarship Finalists and are considered for one of the 2,500 finalists that will receive a $2,500 scholarship for their achievements academically. 8,000 of the 15,000 finalists will receive a Merit Scholar award. The program raises nearly a total of $35 million annually. The students that are named National Merit Scholar Semifinalists have been succeeding in and out of school.