Two dozen students named scholarship semifinalists

More than two dozen local high school seniors were named semi-finalists in a national scholarship program, officials announced Monday.

Students from Corona del Mar High, Newport Harbor High, Costa Mesa High and Sage Hill schools were among 16,000 seniors chosen as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.

The students are: Corona Del Mar’s Cort D. Hastings, Afaf F. Moustafa, Nicholas Roy, Sarah E. Yoo and Benjamin S. Zepfel; Newport Harbor’s Andrew M. Mather and Hailey M. Shaw; Costa Mesa’s Matthew R. Morgan; and Sage Hill’s Danielle I. Kain, Alexander L. Manolakas, Jonathan M. Markman, Devin B. Reed, Natasha J. Sakraney and Shannon R. Zhang.

The students will compete to be named finalists for a chance to win one of about 8,300 scholarship, totaling more than $34 million.

The semifinalists were chosen out of 1.5 million students who earned qualifying PSAT scores for achieving the highest scores.

— Britney Barnes

Twitter: @BritneyJBarnes