September 20, 2023

Aledo High School senior Jack McCarty was recently named a National Merit Semifinalist by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. McCarty is among the more than 16,000 Semifinalists from across the United States to earn this prestigious academic recognition.

McCarty, who plans to major in biology in college and go to medical school, is applying to Vanderbilt University, the University of Texas at Austin, and the University of North Carolina. He had made it a goal to work hard to receive the National Merit Semifinalist recognition.

“I was kind of following it for a while and have been anticipating [results coming out],” McCarty said. “I studied for a while for the PSAT, but I was still really surprised when I found out.”

Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one 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.