Nine students from Sammamish were named National Merit Semifinalists, allowing them to compete for more than $33 million in scholarships.

The students, all seniors, join 19 other Lake Washington School District seniors to compete for more than 7,000 National Merit scholarships awarded nationwide.

Akanksha Bawa, Ashwathy Goutham, Gabriel See and Cheng Shan qualified at Eastlake High School. Aarthi Ganapathi qualified at the International Community School. Kelly Jiang and Jonathan Qu qualified at Redmond High School. Lynsey Liu and Catherine Yao qualified at Tesla STEM High School.

Students qualified by completing the 2013 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The highest scoring students in each state are selected as semifinalists, with about 16,000 semifinalists selected nationwide. Of that, 90 percent are expected to be selected as finalists.

A National Merit Scholarship is a one-time award of about $2,500, along with the title of “National Merit Scholar.” Scholarships are awarded without consideration to major, career plans, college choice or their family’s financial circumstances.