Thirty-three Alachua County Public School students have been named semifinalists in the 2008 National Merit Scholarship Program. That sets a new record for the district, which had a previous high of 26 semifinalists in the 2006 program.

To achieve the prestigious semifinalist status, students had to earn among the nation’s highest scores on the Preliminary SAT/National Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). Each year, about 1.3 million students take the exam, but only 16,000 earn semifinalist status. National Merit semifinalists are highly recruited by the nation’s colleges and universities.

“These students are the cream of the academic crop,” said Superintendent Dan Boyd. “We’re so proud of their accomplishments and proud that the number of our students who have earned this distinction is continuing to rise.”

The students named semifinalists are now eligible to become National Merit Finalists. In addition to their SAT scores, the students must also have high grades, teacher recommendations and write an essay to achieve finalist status. Finalists will be announced in the spring and are eligible for thousands of dollars worth of scholarships provided by businesses, colleges and universities and other organizations.

The semifinalists from Alachua County Public Schools are:

Buchholz High School: Lisa Gardner, Edie Joseph, Katherine Lynch, Bo Ouyang, Anna Piatyszek, Nao Satoh, Jeffrey Shoucair, Katherine Soltis, Jimmy Wong, April Wu, June Wu, Shu Zheng; Eastside High School: Amy Brumme, Joseph Charbonnet, Nerine Constant, Josephine Link, Meng Liu, Evgenia Madorsky, Kristin Magrini, Grace Mandel, Taylor Miller, Yuha Mou, Lauren Rowe, Kelsey Salazar, Ishan Shukla, Jared Sninsky, Sarah Thomas, Elyot Xia-Zhu, Xiaoyue Xie, Willa Zhang; Gainesville High School: Erich Usery; Santa Fe High School: Corinne Larsen, Justin Sturm.