Thirty-seven students in Bellevue schools have been named semifinalists in the 54th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The students are among 16,000 high school seniors nationally who will compete for some 8,200 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $35 million, that will be offered next spring.

To become a finalist, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by the high school principal, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

Approximately 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the Finalist level.

The semifinalists are:

Bellevue High School: Evan A. Boyle, Rachel R. Fenichel, Katharyn Y. Jia, Ekaterina A. Kourbatova, Molly Mackinlay, Taylor Mesojednik, Michael A. Sherry and Max Slivka.

Forest Ridge School of the Sacred Heart: Katherine E. Bent, Florence S.

Lau and Alexandra K. Schofield.

Interlake High School: Rebecca E. Kinchen.

International School: Philip C. de Sa e Silva, Leah E. Fantle, Maia D. Szafer and Sophia E. Welti.

Newport High School: Aiko Amano, Ruby F. Brallier, Rahul F. Brito, Zhuolun Cheng, Andrew Coover, Adlai J. Felser, Justin B. Green, Christopher M. Hastings, Kristin L. Ivarson, Rachel L. Jiang, Farrah Khan, Amy S. Li, Jordan R. Lowe, Anurag V. Mengle, Ezra J. Parter, Meera K. Shenoy, Jinhua Xu, Tony Y.Yan, Ruofan Yu and Danning Zhao.

Sammamish High School: Nick A. Rogstad.