2 Old Lyme Students Among National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist

OLD LYME, CT — National Merit Scholarship Corporation officials Thursday announced the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists in the 70th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, and two students from Old Lyme were among them.

According to a news release provided by the program, 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.

In Old Lyme, two students have been named semifinalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program: Christopher B. Gibbons and Thomas H. Kabel. Both attend Lyme-Old Lyme High School.

About 95 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and approximately half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title, according to the program.

NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants, according to the program.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student's earlier performance on the qualifying test, according to the program.