Two area students have been named as semifinalists in the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Laurel Hilger of Fairfield and Gregory Gott of Sigourney are two of the 16,000 semifinalists which have the opportunity to continue in the competition for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million to be offered next spring. Over 1.6 million juniors in the U.S. entered the program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The pool of semifinalists include the highest scoring entrants in each state, with the number of semifinalists in each state proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. Over 90% of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.