ATLANTA—Seniors at Pinecrest Academy, Cumming, Holy Spirit Prep School, Atlanta, Marist School, Atlanta, St. Pius X High School, Atlanta, and Blessed Trinity High School, Roswell, have been named as semifinalists in the 2016 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Garrett Witt

Drew Bryant and Garrett Witt are seniors at Pinecrest Academy.

Lauren Bohling attends Holy Spirit Prep, where she serves as Head Girl, the elected co-leader of the student body.

Charles Daniel, Theresa Denniss and Courtney Peters are seniors at Marist School.

Matteo De Lurgio, Lane Homrich, Edward Jackson, Maud Kelly, Aimee Paxton and Patrick Woodland are St. Pius X seniors.

Drew Bryant

Leann Copp and Anna Lad, seniors at Blessed Trinity, are also semifinalists.

The National Merit program is an academic competition for recognition and for college scholarships that began in 1955. To participate, juniors in high school take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test and meet program requirements.

Semifinalists place in the top 1 percent of 1.5 million students who take the exam, including the highest scorers in each state.

Finalists will be announced next February and Merit Scholarship awards will be announced in April 2016. Finalists are chosen after assessing a student’s full academic record, leadership, activities, recommendations, essay and scores on SATs.

The program also recognizes commended students, who placed among the top 5 percent of those taking the 2016 exam. Individual schools may announce their names.

Marist School announced its 18 seniors recognized as commended students. They are: Catherine Bailey, Lauren Bittick, Brendan Burke, Emma Burns, Maggie Chouinard, Nick Isaf, Will Kingsfield, Liam Kirchner, Robert Larmore, Ananya Malhotra, Ryan McKenna, Christian McKittrick, Charlie Pickell, Frank Pittman, Natalie Quirk, Steven Spencer, Lindsey Warnock and Conor Wong.

They will receive a letter of commendation from Marist and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.

“Marist School’s commended students from the class of 2016 have ample intellect at their disposal,” said Marist Father Joel Konzen, school principal. “My hope is that they will be able to use it in the future to benefit others as well as their own continued learning.”