2023 National Merit Semi-Finalists

This year’s National Merit Semifinalists list has been released! We are proud to announce that 12 students will be representing our school this year. Those students include:

Gallery • 12 Photos

• Luke Bousfield
• Stephen Gaborsky
• Kai Hatten
• Justin He
• Esha Kusuma
• Sandra Luo
• Jieming Mei
• Clara Ness
• Ani Rice
• Jessica Rice
• Kate Steffen
• Pawani Surthi

If you don’t know what it means to be a Semi-Finalist in the National Merit, it is very challenging and you must be very disciplined to make it this far. To become a National Honor Semifinalsit a student must: pass the qualifying test, submit a scholarship application, obtain an outstanding academic record, and be endorsed by a high school official. These qualifying students makeup about 1% of high school students in the country and will compete for one of the 7,250 scholarships, worth about $28 million. 

This year the Boise School District holds the highest number of qualifying students, 38 in total. That means our district is representing about 41% of National Merit Semi-Finalists. These students are in a pool of 16,000 students across the country and by next spring 95% of those students will obtain the National Merit title and about 50% of those will be awarded a scholarship. To ensure fairness in the competition National Merit sets the number of semi-finalists proportional to the number of graduating students in each state. The students are also never judged based on their gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious beliefs and are strictly assessed on their academic abilities and potential. 

We hope to see each Timberline student progress into the finalist level and receive their well-earned scholarships. These students have put a tremendous amount of effort into making it this far and they are sure to lead very successful lives in the future. Once again, congratulations to these qualifying students from the Timberline Paw Print!