Batavia High School Senior Named 2024 National Merit Semifinalist

BATAVIA, IL — One student from Batavia High School was named a semifinalist in the 70th National Merit Scholarship Program.

Jayden M. Folkerts was among 16,000 named nationwide to receive the distinction. Of those students, 6,870 will be chosen to share nearly $26 million in scholarship money, which will be announced in spring 2025.

To become a National Merit finalist, students must have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal and earn SAT scores that confirm the student's qualifying performance. The semifinalist and a school official must also submit a detailed scholarship application that includes the student's self-descriptive essay as well as information about the student's participation and leadership in school and community activities.

About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 21,000 high schools nationwide took the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to enter the 2025 National Merit Program.

The pool of semifinalists comprises less than one percent of all United States high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered next spring, according to officials. Every finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit $2,500 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.

The 2025 Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July of next year. They will join more than 382,000 students who earned the title of National Merit Scholar in the prestigious program's 70-year history.