ATLANTA—The nationwide pool of 16,000 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, representing less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors, must have an outstanding high school academic record, be recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn Scholastic Aptitude Test scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.

Local students earning the designation include: John Lundkovsky, from Blessed Trinity High School, Roswell; Jack Dinges, Erin Egan, Jacob Read, Christina Shin and Grace Uber from Marist School, Atlanta; and Joshua Christopher, Patrick Crawford, Matthew Desmelik, Emily Pearson, Robert Porter and Jacob Ressler-Craig from St. Pius X High School, Atlanta.