“About 1.5 million students in some 22,000 high schools enter the National Merit Scholarship Competition annually when they take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®). This serves as an initial screen of program entrants. Of these entrants, some 16,000 Semifinalists are designated on a state representational basis, in numbers proportional to each state’s percentage of the nation’s high school graduating seniors. Semifinalists are the highest-scoring program entrants in each state and represent the top 1% percent of the state’s senior students.”