More than 16,000 high school seniors across the United States have been named semifinalists in the 2027 National Merit Scholarship Program, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced this week. The semifinalists now advance to a multi-step competition for about 6,700 scholarships worth a combined total of roughly $24 million, to be awarded next spring.
The 2027 competition is the 72nd annual edition of the program. The semifinalists represent less than one percent of the country’s high school seniors and earned their standing through top scores on the Preliminary SAT / National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. To advance to finalist standing, each student must submit a detailed scholarship application, maintain a strong academic record, secure a recommendation from a school official, write an essay, and post qualifying SAT or ACT scores. The program says that of the roughly 16,000 semifinalists, more than 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level.
Winners will be selected on the basis of skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, and awarded without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin or religious preference. About half of the finalists are expected to receive a scholarship and earn the Merit Scholar title. Finalists will be notified in February 2027, and winners will be announced in stages beginning in April and concluding in July.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which has run the competition since 1955, said the annual awards are supported by businesses, colleges and universities, and individual donors. It cautioned that the number of semifinalists in a given school, district or state should not be used to compare institutions, because the recognition is awarded to individual students on the basis of individual achievement rather than as any measure of school or district performance.
For counselors and principals, the semifinalist naming opens the fall workload of finalist applications, teacher recommendations, and testing verifications that must be completed on the program’s schedule. For families, it opens roughly six months of waiting between qualification and the first round of April announcements, followed by scholarship offers that can meaningfully change where and how a student attends college.
