St. Michael-Albertville Home to Two National Merit Semifinalists

St. Michael-Albertville High School can boast not one, but two National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists for 2011-2012.

That's a pretty "heads-up" achievement for a school with a population of about 1,400, and a senior class that's a bit "smaller" than other schools of that size, said district staff.

Earning the accolades were Austin Stepp, son of David and Brenda Stepp; and Tanner Gilligan, son of Garnet Gilligan.

About 1.5 million high school juniors fro about 22,000 schools nationally enter the 2012 National Merit Scholarship program by taking hte 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

The national pool of semifinalists, which represents less than 1 percent of all high school seniors, includes the highest scoring PSAT entrants in each state. The nubmer of semifinalists from each state is proportional, then, to the state's percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.

Tanner, a soccer player, is interested in continuing his education at Stanford, MIT or UCLA and majoring in computer science and engineering.

Austin, meanwhile, hopes to attend the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, the University of Wisconsin-Madison or North Dakota State University and also major in engineering.

The two will compete, through a series of criteria, to become National Merit Scholars through the NSMC program. About 8,300 national scholars will be named, with more than $34 million in scholarship money available next spring.

About 90 percent of the semifinalists will achieve National Merit Finalist standing, with half of the finalists earning a National Merit Scholarship, earning them the title of "Merit Scholar."