Two seniors from Xaverian  H.S., Bay Ridge, earned a place in the semifinals of the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Patrick Coen and Michael Darby are two of 16,000 students competing for about 8,000 National Merit Scholarships, worth about $35 million.

“Finding out I was a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship was really great news,” Coen said. “It’s a really big accomplishment, so I was happy.”

He was recently elected vice president of Xaverian’s Student Coordinating Council. He is also a member of the Pipe and Drum Corps, Mock Trial team, the Clipper Society and the swim team. Planning to major in engineering, he is interested in applying to a variety of Ivy League schools, as well as Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York and the SUNY Honors Programs.

Despite being part of the .022 percent of students who earned a perfect score on the SAT last spring, Darby says he was taken by surprise by the news that he had been selected as a semifinalist for the National Merit Scholarship.

Darby, who is a member of Xaverian’s Dramatics Society and the Young Democrats Club, is applying to Harvard, Princeton and Yale universities.

“I’m torn between business, engineering, science and math,” he said. In the midst of his academic success, he is also working toward his Eagle Scout badge with the Boy Scouts. His Eagle Scout project involves improving the channel of a stream that overflows regularly in Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve in Staten Island by digging it out and removing debris.

About 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.