National Merit Scholarship semifinalists announced

Several local high school seniors were named as semifinalists in the 53rd annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

These semifinalists advance to the finalist level and about half of the finalists will be selected as Merit Scholarship winners next spring.

To become a finalist, a student must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed by the school principal, earn high SAT scores, and submit an application which includes an essay and information about the student's participation and leadership in school and community activities.

The following students are the local semifinalists:

Newbury Park High School: Michael Alland, Heather DeCamp, Kevin La Rosa, Lingmiao Wang.

La Reina High School: Jennifer Frutchey, Christina Pushaw, Amanda Turk, Rachel Yuengert.

Thousand Oaks High School: Kathryn Baumgarten, Stephanie Bonds, Young Kim, Annelise Mah, Brian Moon, Karly Noblitt, Abigail Sassoon, Kenneth Wang.

Thousand Oaks home school: Benjamin Champion.

Oaks Christian School: Robert Nordlund.

Westlake High School: Michael Chen, Dominic Insogna, Benjamine Liu, Kathleen Lo, Victoria Lou, Andrew Maleki, Linda Peng, David Richardson, Philip Shao, Aislinn Smalling, Danni Xie.