National Merit semifinalists announced

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. released names of semifinalists in its 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program today, and McCallie School led the Chattanooga region with seven qualifying students.

Baylor School and Girls Preparatory School closely followed with four students each. In total, 28 high school seniors from the region were honored: 27 from Tennessee and one from Fort Payne, Ala. No students from area schools in Northwest Georgia were listed.

The process of becoming a semifinalist begins during the junior year of high school when students take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Students named semifinalists are the highest-scoring entrants in each state, a ranking that includes less than 1 percent of all U.S. high school seniors, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp. This year, 16,000 seniors in the country qualified.

All National Merit semifinalists now have the opportunity to compete for $32 million in National Merit Scholarships to be awarded in spring 2018.

The area’s National Merit semifinalists are: ALABAMA

› Fort Payne High School: Elizabeth Titshaw

TENNESSEE Chattanooga

› Baylor School: Andrew Butt, Hayley Harwood, Grace McKenney and Jarrod Vetzel

› Chattanooga School for the Arts and Sciences: Zoe Zimmerman

› Collegiate High: Annika Lee

› East Hamilton Middle-High School: Joseph Azevedo and Joshua Benedict Lagria

› Girls Preparatory School: Margaret Lim, Tatiana Poggi, Kathyn Thel and Sophie Veys

› McCallie School: Chase Gaume, Andrew Landsbergen, Gavin LaPlace, Allen Liu, Andrew Lott, Ahmad Nisar and Jaewon Sung

› Ooltewah High School: Phillip Dyer

› Signal Mountain Middle-High School: Tamjeed Azad

› STEM School: Elias Basler

Cleveland

› Cleveland High School: Brian Byerly

Manchester

› Coffee County Central High School: Thomas Lemmons

Tullahoma

› Tullahoma High School: Bradley Holmes, Alexis Holt and Caleb Purdue.