Twenty-five Rockwood School District seniors have recently been named National Merit Semifinalists.

According to the Rockwood website, 1.5 million juniors entered the 2013 National Merit Scholarship competition when they took the 2011 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®).

To become a semifinalist, students had to have been the highest scoring seniors in the state. Senior Sam St. Clair is one of the Semifinalists.

“They called us into the Senior Office and sat us all around a big administration table and they broke the news to us.  I felt relieved [when I found out I was a Semifinalist] because I thought I was in trouble when I walked in there,” he said.

12 the 25 Rockwood students who are National Merit Semifinalists attend Lafayette.

These students are seniors Saba Bajwa, Ellie Bednarek, Kevin Dick, Derek Legenzoff, Alan Lu, Seth Ludwig, Daniel Martin, Kathleen Newcomer, Samuel St. Clair, Julie Sun, Vivek Vallurupalli and David Wang.

To become a finalist, according to the Rockwood website, “a Semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record, be endorsed and recommended by a school official and earn SAT scores that confirms their qualifying test performance.”

Fifteen thousand Semifinalists are expected to advance to the Finalist level for National Merit Scholarships, according to the Rockwood website.