Eight Prince William students are National Merit semi-finalists

Students Gregory Bastian, Victoria Bevard, Jonathan Buchinsky, Christopher Chi, Christian Ellis, Tian Low, Camryn Phillips, Kimberly Zhang join the nationwide pool of semifinalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program, according to a news release from Prince William County Schools.

About 1.6 million juniors entered the program by taking the 2014 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

Now in their senior year, these PWCS students are among the highest scoring entrants from Virginia and join less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors who are continuing to the next stage of this scholarship competition.

As semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program, these students will compete for one of the 7,400 Merit Scholarship awards, which combined are worth more than $3 million.

Christopher Chi and Kimberly Zhang attend Battlefield High School, Camryn Phillips is student at Brentsville District High School, Christian Ellis and Tian Low attend Woodbridge High School, and Gregory Bastian, Victoria Bevard, and Jonathan Buchinsky attend Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology in Fairfax.

Three types of Merit Scholarship awards will be offered in 2017: National Merit $2,500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships.

The non-profit National Merit Scholarship Corporation will release the names of the 2017 Merit Scholarship winners to news media nationwide beginning in April and concluding in July 2017.