Local students named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. About 1.5 million juniors in some 22,000 high schools entered the 2012 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2010 Preliminary sat/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, totaling about 16,000 students and representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. Semifinalists from Wayland High School include Ryan Budnick, Kaitlin Curran and Elena Drews. These high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $34 million that will be offered next spring.