URBANA — Twenty Uni seniors have been named National Merit Finalists, according to college counselor Lisa Micele.

Only 15,000 seniors nationwide earned the distinction out of some 1.5 million students who took the PSAT in the fall of 2007.

Uni's finalists make up almost 35 percent of their 57-member class and 100 percent of the school's semifinalists from the fall. They are:

• Gregory Atherton
• Daniel Borup
• Vaishnavi Giridaran
• Karen Han
• Jason He
• Rachel Hyman
• Karolina Kalbarczyk
• Jeremy Kemball
• Deren Kudeki
• Alan Liang
• Andrew Lovdahl
• Allan Luo
• Natsuki Nakamura
• Nishant Nookala
• Carl Pearson
• Kareem Sayegh
• Joy Shapley
• Laura Sligar
• Adam Tiouririne
• Richard Wang

As finalists, the students are eligible for some 8,200 Merit Scholarship awards, worth about $36 million. These include $2,500 National Merit Scholarships as well as corporate- and college-sponsored awards.

This is Uni's largest number of honorees since the Class of 2006 had 25 finalists and 25 semifinalists. The Classes of 2007 and 2008 each had 14 finalists and 15 semifinalists.

Students enter the National Merit Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The program is administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

Last year, according to the NMSC's 2007-08 annual report (page 3), a total of 8,486 Merit Scholar designees received Merit Scholarship awards worth $36.8 million in all.

Each September, the NMSC selects about 16,000 National Merit Semifinalists on a state representational basis. Semifinalists are students who were the top scorers on the PSAT in their state.

Becoming a finalist primarily requires filling out NMSC paperwork by the relevant deadline and taking the SAT Reasoning Test.

Illinois had 734 semifinalists this year, representing 173 high schools. Uni had the seventh-largest number of semifinalists in the state and the highest percentage.

The school's semifinalists equaled 8.2 percent of its enrollment in grades 9-12, followed by the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy at 6.1 percent of its enrollment in grades 10-12 (the only grades offered at IMSA) and Chicago University High at 3.4 percent (grades 9-12). No other Illinois school reached 2 percent.