A group of students from The Linsly School and Weir High School were named among America’s National Merit Semifinalists.

From Linsly were Rocco D’Aquila, Caroline Higginbottom, Dylan Lucas and Olivia Rosenthal, joined by Weir High’s Maxwell Wood.

The group is among 69 West Virginia students and 16,000 across the country in contention for the honor, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corp. The semifinalists will compete for close to 6,900 National Merit Scholarships, each worth $2,500, which will be offered in the spring.

More than 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

The pool of semifinalists represents less than 1% of high school seniors, and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist, the semifinalists and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.

Semifinalists must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT or ACT scores confirming the student’s previous performance on the qualifying test.

Finalists for the scholarship will be announced in February, with scholarship recipients announced later in the year.

The National Merit Scholarship Corp. is a not-for-profit organization established in 1955 to conduct the scholarship program. Scholarships are underwritten by the NMSC and approximately 280 business organizations, higher education institutions and individual donors.