Merit Scholarship semifinalists announced

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced yesterday the 16,000 high school students across the country who are semi- finalists in the annual scholarship competition.

The students - who were identified by taking the 1999 Preliminary SAT as high school juniors - will compete for 7,900 Merit Scholarship awards worth more than $31 million.

More than 1.2 million students in more than 20,000 high schools took the PSAT last year, and fewer than 1 percent were named semi- finalists.

A list of area semifinalists can be found on The Sun's Web site, www.sunspot.net.