Pearland Independent School District proudly announces 18 semifinalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program.
These semifinalists include Pearland High School’s Isabel Chung and Dawson High School’s Ru Chen, Langdon Dai, Claire Frederickson, Robert He, Patrick Hughes, John Jewell, Jack Liu, Shaochen Liu, Jonathan Niu, Matthew Niu, Raghav Perumaalla, Fiona Ren, Jiaqi Ren, Madhura Sriram, William Sun, Ellyse Torano, Yifan Wang.
Approximately 16,000 students reached the semifinalist stage this year. These academically talented high school 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.
To be considered for a Merit Scholarship® award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. About 95 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and approximately half will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar® title. Over 1.3 million juniors entered the 2025 scholarship program by taking the 2022 PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
National Merit Scholarships
Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2025. Every Finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 770 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 130 corporations and business organizations for Finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located.
In addition, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who will attend the sponsor institution.
National Merit Scholarship winners of 2025 will be announced in April. These scholarship recipients will join more than 382,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.
