Seniors Named National Merit® Semifinalists

Congratulations to Xaverian Brothers High School seniors Rishu Nevatia ’23 and Braden Kennedy ’23 who were recently named Semifinalists in the 68th annual National Merit® Scholarship Program. 

Rishu and Braden are two of the 16,000 high school students who were notified that they had advanced to the “Semifinalists” standing. They will continue the competition for a chance to become one of the 15,000 students to advance to the “Finalist” level. According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation website, about 95% of the Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and approximately half of the Finalists will win a National Merit® Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title. 

High school students entered the 2023 National Merit® Scholarship Program by taking the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit® Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of roughly 16,000 Semifinalists, representing less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. National Merit® Scholarship designees will be announced later in the spring.