BCSD students honored as National Merit semifinalists for 2026

BEAUFORT– Five Beaufort County School District students have been announced as semifinalists in the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program and will advance to the next level of competition.

 

Selected as national semifinalists were Beaufort High School student Halle Tran; Bluffton High School students Jamie Ni and Katherine Riddle; and May River High School students Irina Anikina and Coleman Jacobi.

 

These students entered the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program competition by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. They are part of the nationwide pool of semifinalists that includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state, placing them in the top one percent of all U.S. high school seniors.

 

As semifinalists, they will compete with more than 16,000 national semifinalists for 6,930 college scholarships worth nearly $26 million.

“These students have achieved something truly remarkable,” said Superintendent Frank Rodriguez. “Their hard work, dedication, and academic excellence have placed them among the top scholars in the nation. We are incredibly proud of them, and we look forward to seeing all they accomplish as they advance in this prestigious competition.”

 

In order to become a finalist, each semifinalist and an official for their high school must submit a detailed application that provides information about the student’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards. In addition, each semifinalist must be endorsed and recommended by an official from their high school, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier score on the qualifying test.

 

The 2026 National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July. Scholarship recipients will join nearly 389,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title since the program’s inception.