The National Merit® Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. High school students enter the National Merit Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test(PSAT/NMSQT®)–a test which serves as an initial screen of approximately 1.5 million entrants each year–and by meeting published program entry/participation requirement. In early September, about 16,000 students, or approximately one-third of the 50,000 high scorers, are notified that they have qualified as Semifinalists. To ensure that academically talented young people from all parts of the United States are included in this talent pool, Semifinalists are designated on a state representational basis. They are the highest scoring entrants in each state.
Semifinalists for the 2024-2025 school year
Front Row (Left to Right): Elizabeth Shoup, Sahej Sachdeva, Parker Alleman, Sophie Calloway, Kyung Cho, Logan Pierce
Back Row (Left to Right): Ridley Morgan, Alexander Willett, Aashni Shah, Arjun Desai, Noel Strange, Weihao Lin
Semifinalists for the 2023-2024 school year
Semifinalists for the 2022-2023 school year
Semifinalists for the 2021-2022 school year:
Seated in front: Cadence Crumpton, Jai Savalkar
Seated on benches, left to right: Ruhani Sachdeva, Zoha Ibrahim, Abigail Nickelson, Hannah McGuire, Sarah Johnson, Evelyn Zheng, Ashini Modi
Standing, left to right: John Henry Nelson, Luke Crittell, William Brice, Jonathan Woldie
Finalists for the 2020-2021 school year:
Students sitting, front to back and left to right: Sophie Wiener, Merritt Shemwell, Diya Desai, Mychal Bennett, Savannah Green, Eleanora Lawrence, Emma Dong, Kyle McGee, Sameer Tirumala
Students standing left to right: Narensankar Saikolappan, Lilah Estes, Joseph Clary, Henry Jones, Nicholas McCallon, Robert Aljuni, Pranshu Khanna, Jackson Still, Eshaan Tandon, and Rami Helmy
Finalists for the 2019-2020 school year:
Front row, left to right: Sloan Hall, Joshua Gill, Grace Sun, Ian Golsby, Taylor Rosen
The Caddo Magnet finalists for the 2018-2019 school year:
Front row, left to right: Kaili Taylor, Sarah Salvatore, Mrs. Barbara McGuire, Catherine Rutledge, and Katherine Howell. 2nd row, left to right: Mr. Michael Ilgenfritz, Srikhar Chilukuri, and Dain Ross
Finalists / semi-finalists for the 2017-2018 school year:
From left to right: Ariel Miller, Sean Hearn, Matthew Willis, Robert Brown, Jack Howard (semi-finalists) , Sunjay Letchuman, Sean Cassingham, Christopher McCallon, and Shayan Yerrapragada
The Caddo Magnet finalists for the 2016-2017 school year:
From front to back, left to right: Matthew Given, Mackenzie Brown, Sandra Shahriar, Antares McCoy-Villaneda, Mary North Jones, Ankur Khana, Nathan Smith, Nathan Speakes, Bryan Chen, and David Lu.
Finalists for the 2015-2016 school year:
From left to right: Michael Jung, Cameron Wallace, Daniel Speakes, Amir Kaskas, and Meghana Rao.