Two seniors have qualified as National Merit semifinalists.

Andrew Bell and Kai Blosser were recognized this month for their scores on the PSAT, which were among the top 3.5 percent in the nation.

Although glad to make the cut, both anticipated their scores would be high enough.

“I was excited but not too surprised,” Blosser said.

This year’s cutoff score was 213.

“Usually you can kind of tell what the cutoff score will be,” Bell said. “Once you get your PSAT score you can kind of guess.”

Semifinalists were notified on Sept. 9 and in February will find out if their scores qualify them as finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. The top 15,000 of the 16,000 semifinalists have the opportunity to apply for the National Merit Scholarship, which comes with a $2,500 scholarship and opportunities from individual universities.

“It would first of all look really good on college applications,” Bell said about being a finalist. “It would mean that I would have a lot of opportunities for scholarships, and that’d be a really cool thing for me because it would help me get into college for less.”