FOUR AREA STUDENTS SEMIFINALISTS IN NATIONAL MERIT SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM

Three students from Cape Girardeau Central High School and one from Jackson High School have been named semifinalists in the 1995 National Merit Scholarship competition.

Honored from Central High School are Jonathan L. Raymond, Sabrina L. Renka and Jeffrey M. Riley, and from Jackson High School, Erica L. Trickey.

The National Merit Scholarship program this week announced names of 15,000 semifinalists. About one-half of one percent of each state's high school graduating class is represented in the nationwide pool of semifinalists.

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for approximately 6,700 Merit Scholarships, worth more than $26 million, to be awarded next spring.

More than 1 million juniors in over 19,000 U.S. high schools entered the 1995 Merit program by taking the 1993 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

The highest scorers in each state were designated semifinalists in numbers based on the state's percentage of the national total of graduating high school seniors. Semifinalist must now advance to the finalist level of the competition in order to be considered for Merit Scholarships.

To qualify as a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by the high school principal and submit an SAT score that confirms the earlier test performance. About 90 percent of semifinalists will become finalists.