This year, three seniors from Trinity Christian Academy (TCA) in Addison were honored by the National Merit Scholarship Program. Ashley McWhorter, Avery Schuster and Lindsay Bartol ranked as a National Merit Semi-Finalist. As semi-finalists, McWhorter, Schuster and Bartol will be notified by the organization by mid-February whether they will advance as a finalist in the competition.

Over 1.6 million students entered the 2019 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2017 Preliminary SAT.  The students were judged based on PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test scores. Throughout the competition, about 34,000 commended students throughout the nation are recognized for their exceptional academic promise and about 16,000 semi-finalists are chosen among the highest scoring entrants of each state. 15,000 of the semi-finalists are expected to advance to the finals by completing the National Merit Scholarship Application and meeting several other requirements. National Merit Scholarship awards as well as corporate-sponsored and college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be granted to about 7,500 finalists.