Senior Ericka Shin was recently named a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. She joins the ranks of thousands of other students who have also been entered on the list of high-achieving students.

The National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, or NMSQT as it is more commonly known, is an exam that designates students as high-achieving. Currently, there are approximately 1,600 students on the semifinalist list. Semifinalists are the highest performing students for each state and are then filtered through to 1,300 students to become finalists. The final pool of 800 finalists are the ones who receive a scholarship, regardless of financial standing or decisions for college.

Shin took the PSAT as a junior and scored 235, the highest score or her class. “Ms. Turdjian called me over and told me about the process,” Shin said. “Even when I first got my score she told me that ‘we’d be keeping in touch,” Shin said.

Although being a semi-finalist is a huge honor, Shin says that certain things make her a little anxious about it all. “I’m nervous about what’s to come, writing essays and getting those things looked at by the College Board. It’s scary,” she said.

Shin said that she was worried her SAT scores would differ from her PSAT score.“I just hope it won’t be a big problem, since my PSAT projected a higher score than what I actually ended up getting on the SAT,” she said.