<p>The Princeton Review is correct.
Are you/your child a national merit semi-finalist? National merit information has been sent out to schools. If you are a semi-finalist, your school should have notified you, and you would have been given a packet detailing all the steps you must take to apply to become a finalist. You can check the score cutoffs being posted around the board, if your scores are greater or equal to the cutoff, you are a semi-finalist. If you are, you need to find out why you haven’t been given your packet as you’ll need that ASAP.
If you’re just curious, here’s what you’ve got to do from semi-finalist to finalist.
Get a teacher/school official to write a recommendation. (They will also fill out a form that assesses the rigor of your school, your own curriculum, etc.)
Write a short essay (around 500 words)
Take the SAT and send scores to national merit. </p>
<p>Hope I was helpful! (And accurate. I haven’t read through my packet entirely yet, haha.)</p>