Two students at Adel-DeSoto-Minburn High School have been placed on the exclusive list of National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.

The list of students was released Wednesday, and ADM seniors Emily Pottebaum and Cade Stine-Smith both made the cut. They join a pool of around 16,000 other semifinalists from across the country, which will be whittled down to about 15,000 finalists. From the finalist list, around 7,500 scholarships will be awarded between April and July of 2018. The awards include 2,500 National Merit Scholarships, around 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships, and 4,000 college-sponsored scholarships.

Around 1.6 million students start in the National Merit program by taking qualifying tests as juniors. Those that are named semifinalists represent the highest-scoring entrants in each state, and make up less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors. To become a finalist, the student must submit a detailed scholarship application, be endorsed and recommended by a school official, write an essay, and earn an SAT score that confirms their earlier performance in the qualifying test.

This is the 63rd annual National Merit Scholarship program, and award winners around the country will receive scholarships totalling more than $32 million.