Gulliver Preparatory School is proud to announce that six students have been selected as National Merit Scholar Semifinalists.
Ashley Garcia ‘25, Chloe Marjenberg ‘25, Neelesh Pandey ‘25, Claire Roades ‘25, Alexa Smith ’25, and Stefan Weiss ‘25 join more than 16,000 Semifinalists in the 70th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. This group of academically talented seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring.
About 95% of the National Merit Scholar Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and approximately half of the Finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title. Last year, four seniors of Gulliver Prep’s Semifinalists went on to become Finalists, and Ivan Pankov ‘24 was honored as National Merit Scholar.
Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 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. From over 16,000 Semifinalists, more than 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation.
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.
