Plainfield East High School Seniors Kyleah Edison and Rishi Shah are among the more than 16,000 National Merit Scholarship 2026 semifinalists nationwide.
The pair will compete for about 6,930 National Merit Scholarship awards worth about $26 million.
The awards will be announced next spring. This is the 71st year of the prestigious program, which honors academically talented high school seniors.
About 95 percent of the semifinalists will be named finalists in February 2026, and about half of the finalists will earn a National Merit Scholarship.
To become a National Merit Finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying performance..
The semifinalist and a school official must also submit a detailed scholarship application, including the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about the student’s participation and leadership in school and community activities.
About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 20,000 high schools nationwide took the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to enter the 2026 National Merit Program.
The pool of semifinalists comprises less than one percent of all United States high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
National Merit Finalists will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships.
About 150 corporations and businesses will also give about 830 corporate-sponsored scholarships to finalists who meet those organizations’ criteria.
And, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance about 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists attending their sponsoring institution.
The 2026 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April-July 2026. They will join more than 389,000 other distinguished students who have earned the title of National Merit Scholar.
About the National Merit Scholarship Corporation
National Merit Scholarship Corporation, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by about 300 business organizations, higher education institutions, and individual donors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.