Three seniors at William Penn Charter School were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists last week. Sydney Wood of Bala Cynwyd, and Liam La Barge and Daniel Will of Ambler, qualified for the first round of the highly selective competition on September 9, 2020.

The National Merit Scholarship Program’s website describes the program as “an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955.” Semifinalists represent those students who scored highest, by state, on the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Approximately 16,000 semifinalists were selected from a pool of more than 1.5 million applicants. Of those semifinalists, 15,000 will go on to become finalists in February and approximately 7,000 will be awarded scholarships between March and June. Winners are judged on their records of academic achievement, leadership and extracurricular engagement.

According to its website, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has “recognized over 3.3 million students and provided some 432,000 scholarships worth over $1.7 billion.”

Each year the NMSC grants three kinds of awards: a National Merit $2500 Scholarship, a corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship Award and a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship Award.