A Palm Desert High School student had two motivations when he was a junior studying for the Preliminary SAT: earn a shot at scholarship money for college — and beat his older brother's score.
Thomas Nelson, 17, now a senior, is the only student from the Coachella Valley who was named a semifinalist in the 2027 National Merit Scholarship Program.
He is one of 21 semifinalists from Riverside County and more than 16,000 nationwide. More than 1.2 million high school juniors entered the competition by taking the PSAT in 2025, with less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors reaching the semifinal round.
Semifinalists must next apply to become finalists before they can be considered for one of about 6,700 scholarships worth a combined $24 million, according
to a press release from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, the not-for-profit organization that operates the scholarship.
Before Nelson knew he would be one of those semifinalists, he was still waiting to see whether his PSAT score had cleared California's cutoff. He did a little sleuthing online, following reports that tracked National Merit qualifying scores from state to state.
Principal Sarit Saig later walked into his sixth period calculus class and asked him to step outside. Normally, being summoned by the principal would have unnerved him, but Nelson had already seen enough online to suspect the visit was good news. Besides, the principal had pulled him out of class the year before for another award.
A few minutes later, Nelson was back in calculus with confirmation that his hunch was right. His teacher congratulated him, but one classmate was more amused.
"Why do you keep getting stolen from your sixth period class by the principal all the time?" Nelson recalled her asking.
A family connection and a little sibling rivalry
National Merit had already paid off once in Nelson's family. His father had qualified for National Merit as a high school student in Alabama and received a "very big" scholarship through the academic scholarship competition — an experience he later encouraged both of his sons to pursue for themselves.
Nelson's brother, now a college sophomore, added a little healthy competition to the mix, with the younger Nelson hoping to outscore him on the PSAT and SAT. (And he did, as it turned out — though Nelson said the sibling rivalry "was all very fun and lighthearted.") He also wanted to make his parents proud and knew his grades, test scores and perseverance could strengthen his college prospects.
"I was happy with my accomplishment in itself — that I'd learned a lot, that I'd gotten a lot better at math and English," Nelson said. "But I think that having that accomplishment confirmed by actually meeting the cutoff and getting National Merit made it all whole."
A ‘Clue’ into what's next for Nelson
Nelson plans to apply to a wide range of colleges this fall, including several top public universities in California. He is considering studying public policy, as he already spends plenty of time thinking about politics and testing arguments through the high school's mock trial team.
When conversations turn to political issues, he wants to know what the policies at the center of those arguments actually do and whether they work.
"I want to be the person who's an expert on these things because I find them very interesting and I care a lot about them," Nelson said.
He recently spent time shadowing Palm Desert's planning department, where he explored how the city balances housing density with affordability and cars with public transportation.
"Those are the things that affect your daily life," he said.
Between college applications, mock trial and theater, Nelson's own daily life is already plenty full.
While he had spent the week waiting to learn whether he had made the National Merit semifinalist cutoff, there was already something else keeping him in suspense: which character he would play in Palm Desert High's production of "Clue," the murder-mystery comedy inspired by the classic board game.
(At 11, Nelson was selected as one of seven young contestants on Nickelodeon's holiday competition series "Top Elf," where he finished in the top three competing for the chance to direct a $25,000 donation to his chosen nonprofit, Palm Springs-based Boo2Bullying. Even then, he said he was looking forward to finding more ways to give back to his community.)
He still didn't know which role he would play, but he said he hoped anyone reading The Desert Sun would come see the whodunit running Oct. 22-24 to support the students bringing it to the stage.
A day after speaking to a reporter, he sent an update. Mystery solved: He had been cast as Mr. Green.
Riverside County's 2027 National Merit semifinalists
Here's a list of the local semifinalists across Riverside County, by city, provided by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation:
Corona
Santiago High School, Corona-Norco Unified School District
- Bryant Zhang
Eastvale
Homeschool/ Online School
- Ashwin Karthik
Eleanor Roosevelt High School, Corona-Norco Unified
- Mick Chen
- Andrew Robinson
- Christian Zeledon
Hemet
Western Center Academy, Hemet Unified School District
- Anum Firoz
Palm Desert
Palm Desert High School, Desert Sands Unified School District
- Thomas A. Nelson
Riverside
Arlington High School, Riverside Unified School District
- Matthew B. Wilson
Homeschool/ Online School
- Abigail Hurst
Martin Luther King High School, Riverside Unified
- Erik Chen
- Ian Do
- Erin Nguyen-Khoa
- Shiva Talati
- Junhao Tan
- Erica Yin
Temecula
Chaparral High School, Temecula Valley Unified School District
- Jack Callahan
Great Oak High School, Temecula Valley Unified
- Daniela D. Baleva
- Hayley A. Foo Xin Yu
- Alberto G. KoTafoya
- Therence S. KoTafoya
- Ruoyuan Wang
Jennifer Cortez covers education and breaking news in the Coachella Valley. Reach her at jennifer.cortez@desertsun.com.
This article originally appeared on Palm Springs Desert Sun: Palm Desert senior only Coachella Valley student to get academic honor
