Twin Falls School District celebrates National Merit Semi-Finalists from Twin Falls High School

TWIN FALLS, Idaho (KMVT/KSVT) — Six seniors from Twin Falls High School have been named National Merit Scholarship Semi-finalists for 2024.

These students are among the top students in the country to be recognized for their outstanding academic achievements.

“We’re merit semi-finalist right now, but by February, hopefully all of us will be finalist,” says Will Hawkins.

All six students make up less than 1% of PSAT test-takers nationwide, according to the Twin Falls School District.

“There’s a few colleges, too that offer semi-finalist and finalist full tuition- free ride, so my dad is excited about that if I decide to go to any of those schools,” says Nolan Dickerson.

Some of the semi-finalists will also be eligible for scholarships worth over $30 million.

“It would help me take out less student loans. It would be good to avoid debt as much as possible so that would be nice,” says Eve Anderson.

“Money would be the thing that would stop me from going to college and the National Merit opened up that whole opportunity,” says Dylan Sayers.

Some semi-finalists say they’ve studied and prepared to be in the top percent of test takers. One of those students happened to be Adam Wright, who received a perfect score on the SAT.

“I did a decent amount of practice test on my own, sort of going through seeing what questions you missed, go back and figure out why you missed them, take another test, repeat,” says Wright.

Principal Nancy Jones expressed great pride in the students’ accomplishments.

“It’s amazing. Just to give you some numbers-- 1.3 million students take the standardized test, which puts them in the running for the National Merit Scholarships, and then that number is reduced to 50 thousand and we had eight of them in the nation to start the school year,” says Jones. “Two of them were commended so that left us with six, those 6 are of 16,000 across the nation.”

The National Merit Scholarships will be awarded to students next year in the spring.

“I think it’s cool to know you’re one of the best in the nation, academically and definitely a lot of people helped me get there,” says Preston Dopp.

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