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By RACHEL RAIFORD | Staff Writer 

Several students across Shelby County have been named 2025 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.   

After submitting applications to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, 36 students from six different schools were recognized as semifinalists for the prestigious reward.

There are more than 16,000 semifinalists in the 70th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Each senior will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring.

The schools from Shelby County represented are Thompson High School, Oak Mountain High School, Spain Park High School, Helena High School, Briarwood Christian School and Indian Springs School. 

Of those schools, Indian Springs school is the most represented with 11 students being announced as semifinalists. Those students are Nathan Albert, Avery Biga, Evelyn Frohsin, Aviva Goldberg, Ibrahim Hamo, Jihyun Kim, Erik Ledvina, Maximilian Lizee, Radyn Moradkhani, Syla Steinman and Samuel White. 

Oak Mountain and Spain Park each had eight students announced as semifinalists. Seniors from Oak Mountain are Madelyn Bailey, Benjamin Dahle, Tyler Glenn, Eun Song Lee, Ali Najim, Logan Price and Abigail Smith. Students from Spain Park are Michael Allen, Carmen Britt, Xuyang Chen, Julia Daigle, David Johnson, Tracy Li, Noah Smith and Rebecca Stafford. 

Helena totaled four semifinalists. Elijah Andrews, Nathaniel Blevins, Lindsay Etheridge and Anna Havecroft. 

Beyond that, Briarwood and Thompson each had two students named as semifinalists. Mark Houston and Ian Robertson will represent BCS and Charles Lowrey and Tanner Reid will represent Thompson. 

More than 1.3 million high school juniors entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as the initial screening for program entry. The nationwide pool of semifinalists included the highest scoring entrants in each state. 

To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition. About 95 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title. 

Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2025. Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. 

More than 700 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 130 corporations and business organizations for finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located. 

In addition, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for finalists who will attend the sponsor institution. 

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2025 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 382,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.