Luke Weeks, a senior at Coosa High School, is one of 16,000 students nationwide to be named semifinalists in the 2010 National Merit Scholarship Program. Weeks will now have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,200 scholarship awards, worth more than $36 million, that will be offered this spring. About 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and approximately half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.

Luke Weeks has been active in academic and extra-curricular activities at Coosa High School.  He has been on the Coosa Academic Decathlon team all four years and has won the overall award in the academic competition for the past two years.  Weeks led the Coosa Academic Decathlon team to the first place team award each of his three years in the competition.  Weeks and the Coosa team will be seeking to add to those accomplishments in the 2010 Academic Decathlon to be held in January.  He has also won medals in academic competition at the state level.  Weeks was voted captain of the Coosa team that competed on the Channel 2 High Q television program.

More than 1.5 million juniors in nearly 22,000 U.S. high schools entered the 2010 National Merit Program by taking the 2008 Preliminary SAT/ National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. 

To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout the high school years, be endorsed and recommended by the school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier qualifying test performance. The student must also submit a self-descriptive essay and information about participation and leadership in school and community activities.  

Updated: September 18, 2009