Fairfield Christian Academy is proud to announce that Claire Hoover and Jeremiah Herron have been named as National Merit Scholar Semifinalists and Finalists. This national distinction places them in the top one percent of high school seniors in the United States.
Claire Hoover has been awarded a National Merit Scholarship from Liberty University where she will major in Exercise Science and minor in Business and Spanish.
Jeremiah Herron has been awarded the University of Alabama National Merit Finalist Scholarship and the National Merit Nationwide Foundation Scholarship to use at the University of Alabama where he will be majoring in Chemistry.
Over 1.5 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of Semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
To be considered for a National Merit Scholarship, Semifinalists had to fulfill requirements to advance to Finalist standing. Each Semifinalist was asked to complete a detailed scholarship application, which included writing an essay and providing information about extracurricular activities, awards, and leadership positions. Semifinalists also had to have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirmed their qualifying test performance. From the Semifinalist group, some 15,000 met Finalist requirements. By the conclusion of the 2020 competition, about 7,600 Finalists will have been selected to receive National Merit Scholarships totaling over $30 million.