Nearly 90 high school seniors in Cobb County have been named semifinalists in the 65th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

These 88 Cobb, Marietta City and private school students are among the 16,000 students across the country who’ve earned the chance to compete for 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million set to be offered in the spring, the program said.

In all, 1.5 million juniors from about 21,000 high schools entered the National Merit program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT, or PSAT.

The group said the number of national semifinalists amounts to less than 1% percent of all high school seniors across the country. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to how many seniors graduated from that state compared to the rest of the nation.

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A semifinalist must have an “outstanding academic record throughout high school” along with a recommendation by a high school official, an essay and high SAT/ACT scores.

Nearly 90% are expected to move to the finalist round, which requires a detailed scholarship application with their academic record, participation in school/community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors/awards received. Finalists will be notified of their status in February.

Here are the Cobb County semifinalists:

Campbell High School

Dorr-Kapczynski, Natasha

Hong, Samantha A.

Jaafar, Youssef

Jaramillo Celis, Isabella

Lin, Damon

Rowe, Eden O.

Harrison High School

Delfausse, Leah M.

Enow, Bessem

Hillgrove High School

Montoya, Evan R.

Smith, Andrew J.

Kennesaw Mountain High School

Hester, Braden R.

Johnson, Jayden R.

Omoma, Sasamon B.

Patel, Evani N.

Regier, Elaina R.

Lassiter  High School

Froula, Eleanor B.

Halloran, Claire M.

Kramer, Joseph P.

Levitt, Gabrielle P.

Mitchell, Anna K.

Pereira, Catherine L.

Tegethoff, Paul H.

Marietta High School

Askins, Kailyn

Baglivio, Oscar D.

Goodwin, Rebecca R.

Mount Paran Christian School

Vaughan, Alison A.

North Cobb Christian School

Baek, Seungju

Durity, Aidan R.

Pope High School

Burris, Ada R.

Harry, Sanjeet C.

Myers, Andrew M.

Pivnik, Yelizaveta I.

Sprayberry High School

Misra, Reilly S.

The Walker School

Carruth, Karoline

Haynes, Andrew D.

Kaczynski, Erika A.

Sheikh, Shanzeh M.

Wetherington, Kalieann I.

White, Lauren R.

Walton High School

Bae, Chanwoo

Bass, Jordan

Berger, Alec

Cameron, Andrew

Catanese, Daniel

Chareddy, Anjali

Chiles, Taylor

de Cleir, Sinead

Denning, Judith

Dierker, Julia

Emerine, Russell

Jacobson, Reagan

Kemelmakher, Guy

Lakdawala, Aleem

Li, Andrew

Lu, Viviana

Manikkoth, Nidhi

McKinley, Kara

More, Rushil

Newton, Russell

Pitts, Erik

Raja, Neeraj

Rajan, Anant

Rajbhandari, Pranav

Rieck, Aaron

Saligrama, Arvind

Shabazaz, Tara

Simon, Eric

Sun, Bill

Thomas-Wilkinson, Shiloh

Tong, Qilin

Uppalapati, Ria

Vemana, Akshin

Venkatesan, Tharun

Zhang, Madeline

Zibran, Zaim

Wheeler High School

Abunyewa, Ann-Marie A.

Alapati, Kruthik S.

Autera, Ava R.

Bishop, Charlie E.

Chen, Patrick G.

Cullinan, Alessa L.

Jewel, Rose

Kent, Brian

Mason, Emma G.

Nedumpurath, Pranav J.

Payne, Jeremy L.

Wan, Morris I.

Yao, Eric W.