17 students in Madison qualify as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists

MADISON – Officials with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation have named the first set of semifinalists for the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program. Madison has 17 students to qualify for the honor.

The National Merit Scholarship Program honors individual students who show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies. (nationalmerit.org) These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for approximately 6,930 National Merit Scholarships that are worth about $26 million. The corporation will offer the funding next spring. For consideration as a Merit Scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the competition’s finalist level.

These Madison students have achieved outstanding academic records and now are National Merit Semifinalists:

• James Clemens High School – Semifinalists Isabelle Bao, Sophia Stull, David Tettey, Vineet Vadrevu and Cade Workman.

• Home school / Online school — Larry G. Gariepy.

• Bob Jones High School – Semifinalist Aaron Chen, Nathan Chiu, Alexander Fedoseyev, Ally Kuang, Arnav Maskey, Isabelle Park, Nirvana Rajbhandari, Fiona Spurlock, Karsten Wallace, Edward Xiao and Andre Yang.

About 95 percent of the semifinalists are expected to advance as finalists, and approximately half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, which gives them the status of Merit Scholar.

Established in 1955, National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a not-for-profit organization, operates without government assistance. The corporation underwrites the scholarships with its own funds and with about 300 business organizations, higher education institutions and individual donors that share the corporation’s goals.

More than 1.3 million juniors in about 20,000 high schools entered the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test or PSAT / NMSQT. The testing served as an initial screening of program entrants.

The corporation will offer three types of National Merit Scholarships in spring 2026:

• National Merit $2500 Scholarships – All finalists will compete for one of these scholarships, awarded on a state-representational basis.

• Corporate-Sponsored Merit Scholarships — Approximately 150 corporations and businesses provide about 830 corporate-sponsored awards. Finalists must satisfy specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities in which sponsor plants or office operate.

• College-Sponsored Merit Scholarships — About 150 colleges and universities finance 3,600 College- Sponsored Merit Scholarships for finalists who will attend the sponsor institution.

National Merit Scholarship Corporation’s headquarters are in Evanston, Ill. For more information, visit nationalmerit.org.