Dos Pueblos High School juniors will be taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test tomorrow, giving them the opportunity to qualify for a scholarship.

Each year, the top 1 percent of junior PSAT takers become semifinalists and of these students, around 7,500 win scholarship money

Out of the 516 DPHS seniors that took the 2024 PSAT, six seniors were selected as National Merit Scholar Semifinalists after their high performance on the test. They are Melisande Mayo, Ariel Li, Jonathan Yang, Oliver Saleh, Bryan Chen, and Leon Guo.

Leading up to the PSAT, Guo said he started studying every day for 30 minutes during the summer going into his junior year, and Li shared that she started to study about two weeks in advance to the PSAT.

“I finished Khan Academy’s SAT course, and then I went on to the SAT’s question bank and filtered only hard questions,” Guo said. “Afterwards, I took the Bluebook practice tests.”

Li also utilized Khan Academy’s preparatory courses during her preparation for the PSAT. She advises students to learn time management, and said that it is the “most important skill.”

“I was already studying for the SAT, so that translated over,” Guo said. “The biggest difference between the PSAT and SAT, I would say, is the difficulty. The SAT is a lot harder.”

After high school, Li said she’s considering a career in bio engineering, but said that she could also see herself pursuing mathematics. She is currently taking Math 220 at Santa Barbara City College, and finds it “really fun.”

For Guo, he plans to major in electrical engineering in college, and would invest the scholarship money rather than use it towards tuition.

“The money’s probably going to be used in investments, maybe stocks,” Guo said. “I’m not going to have it directly pay for my college tuition because tuition is around $50,000, so $2,500 won’t really make a dent.”

Along with the six National Merit Scholar Semifinalists, 20 other DPHS seniors were recognized as National Merit Commended Scholars, placing them among the top 3 to 4 percent of PSAT test-takers nationwide. The seniors that earned this title are Luca Bottorff, Catherine Brecher, Joel Cuevas, Sean Dilbeck, Yohannes Efrem, Nicholas Feldman, Cullen Gully, Justin Ji, Jiyoo Kim-Jung, Tristan Marston, Josef Masser, Elliot McGuire, Rui Rebich Hespanha, Fiona Ri, Ryan Shen, Phoebe Siegel, Carter Te Slaa, Ila Walman-Randall, Theodore Weld, and Aaron Xie.

Alongside juniors, sophomores will be taking the Pre-ACT today, a preliminary test to the ACT. This test doesn’t result in a scholarship, and is given to provide students with experience in standardized testing.