Plainfield East High School seniors Kyleah Edison and Rishi Shah are among the more than 16,000 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for 2026.

The pair will compete for the 6,930 National Merit Scholarship awards worth about $26 million. The awards will be announced in the spring.

About 1.3 million high school juniors in about 20,000 high schools nationwide took the 2024 preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test to enter the 2026 National Merit Program.

The pool of semifinalists includes less than 1% of all U.S. high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

About 95% of the semifinalists will be named finalists in February. About half of the finalists will receive a National Merit Scholarship.