Seniors Cole Novak and Lukas Walters earned the honors. “I'm very excited. It makes me feel very accomplished,” said Novak.
“I’m happy and very surprised,” said Walters.
Both students are active in jazz and symphonic bands and each are taking several Advanced Placement classes at TKHS.
Novak enjoys being in the bands, reading, Science Olympiad and being a member of the tennis team. He is considering attending the University of Michigan to study some type of biology.
Walters enjoys playing bass and acoustic guitars as well as the trombone in the bands and in his worship band at church. He also has been in TK theatrical productions since the fourth grade and loves to read in his spare time. He is considering attending Western Michigan University to study law.
According to information from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, the students were selected as two of the 16,000 semi-finalists for 2025. The program gives the semifinalists the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million to be offered next spring.
More than 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 SAT/National Merit Scholarship qualifying test. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
Of more than 16,000 semifinalists, more than 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level. National Merit Scholarship finalists for 2025 will be announced in April-July 2025.