Plainfield North High School seniors Yash Patel and Madeleine Yui are among the more than 16,000 National Merit Scholarship 2027 semifinalists nationwide.
The pair will compete for about 6,700 National Merit Scholarship awards worth about $24 million.
The awards will be announced next spring. This is the 72nd year of the prestigious program, which honors academically talented high school seniors.
About 95 percent of the semifinalists will be named finalists in February 2027, and about half of the finalists will earn a National Merit Scholarship, earning the title of Merit Scholar.
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.
More than 1.2 million high school juniors in about 20,000 high schools nationwide took the 2025 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to enter the 2027 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 120 corporations and businesses will also give about 700 corporate-sponsored scholarships to finalists who meet those organizations’ criteria.
And, about 140 colleges and universities are expected to finance about 3,500 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists attending their sponsoring institution.
The 2027 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July 2027. They will join more than 395,000 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.