Nine students representing four Deer Valley Unified School District high schools have earned their way to being semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Students enter the National Merit program, which began in 1955, by taking the preliminary SAT National Merit scholarship qualifying test, also known as the PSAT or NMSQT.

Semifinalists representing Mountain Ridge High School are Ting-Yun Lee, Shahin Madantschi, Conner Segraves, and Isabella Shin; from Barry Goldwater High School, Felicity Burton; for Boulder Creek High School, Kaden Tang; and representing Sandra Day O’Connor High School are Naitik Mohanty, Aiden Young, and Elizabeth Young.

Currently more than 1.3 million students from about 20,000 high schools throughout the country enter the National Merit Scholarship program each year. Some 50,000 entrants qualify for program recognition, and approximately 7,600 students receive scholarships for their undergraduate studies.

More than 16,000 of the high scores representing less than 1% of the nation’s high school graduating seniors qualify as semifinalists in each annual National Merit program.

They are the only participants who have an opportunity to advance in the competition for some 7,000 merit scholarship awards.

The finalists will be announced in February.

Isabella Shin, from Mountain Ridge High School, is a National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalist.

(Photo provided by Deer Valley Unified School District)

Shahin Madantschi, from Mountain Ridge High School, is a National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalist.

(Photo provided by Deer Valley Unified School District)