Nearly 50 students at Interlake High School, a public school in Bellevue, are National Merit Scholarship program semifinalists, more than any other high school in Washington.
The school had 31 semifinalists last year, coming in second after the private Lakeside School in North Seattle, which had more than three dozen.
Twenty-four Lakeside students are semifinalists this year.
The state’s semifinalists join roughly 16,000 other students nationwide who had the highest scores on the 2019 PSAT, a standardized test taken by high school juniors that helps qualify them for the award. About 1.5 million juniors took the test in 2019.
About 90 percent of semifinalists nationwide will be named finalists in February; of those, about 7,600 will go on to receive scholarships that together total more than $30 million. To become a finalist, students must submit academic, extracurricular, employment and other information.