Nine Eastview High School seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2008-09 National Merit Scholarship Program and another 17 students are being recognized as National Merit commended students this year. The names of the semifinalists in this 53rd annual scholarship program were released by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation of Evanston, Ill.

National Merit semifinalists rank among the top 1.6 percent of high school seniors nationwide and are eligible to compete for the more than 8,200 merit scholarships – totaling $34 million – which will be awarded next spring.

The 9 National Merit semifinalists from Eastview are:

• Colin Burke, Tarini Goyal, Weiming Hou, Barbara Marchevsky, Sheena Mbachu, Semira Mohammed, Rachel Sams, Emily Smith and Joshua Tollefson of Eastview High School.

Students are selected as National Merit semifinalists based on their scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which they take as juniors. More than 1.4 million students in nearly 21,000 U.S. high schools took the test last year.

The 5 semifinalists from Eastview and their schools will now submit additional information in order for the students to be considered for National Merit finalist selection. Approximately 90 percent of semifinalists will be named finalists in spring 2009 and will be eligible to receive scholarships that are awarded by businesses, colleges and universities, and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. 

The National Merit Scholarship Program also recognizes students whose scores on the PSAT/NMSQT rank them in the top 5 percent of students nationwide. At Eastview, the following 17 high school seniors are 2008-09 National Merit commended students:

• Lauren Carlson, Vincent Cheng, Tyler Cozort, Brooke Elliott, Ryan Henry, Emily Kimball, Gregory Koutnik, Alyssa Landin, Colton Marti, Patrick Moran, Claire Nelson, Adam Overvig, Kristen Riehle, Elle Schultz, Elana Siegel, Rachel Wong and Rohit Yallamraju of Eastview High School.