Well done to Manatee County’s National Merit Scholars.

They are Benjamin Barr (Palmetto High), Kevin Chen (Braden River), Richard Lay (Manatee), Pearson Walters (Saint Stephen’s) and Sarah Weis (State College of Florida Collegiate School).

The quintet are among 16,000 semifinalists in the 71st annual National Merit Scholarship Program for academically talented high school seniors vying for 6,930 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million.

They made it through quite a rigorous process.

Barr, Chen, Lay, Walters and Weis were among more than 1.3 million juniors from nearly 20,000 high schools who entered the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT-National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

In addition, they had to submit a detailed

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