Lufkin ISD announces eight students who have received national academic honors including National Merit Semi-finalist, National Hispanic Recognition Program and National Merit Commended. Michael Calhoun was named a National Merit Semi-finalist. There are approximately 16,000 Semi-finalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. According to the National Merit website, to qualify, the student must submit his or her academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received. A Semi-finalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. These students have the opportunity to continue in the competition for scholarships.
Cristal Delacruz, Adrian Garcia, Aiden Willis, Kyle Wynne received the honor of National Hispanic Recognition Program. They are among the 5,000 of the 250,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors who took the test. These students must take the PSAT/NMSQT in October of their junior year and achieve minimum required selection index score, be at least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino, and earn a cumulative GPA of 3.5 or higher by the middle of their junior year.
Aiden Willis, Sarah Cook, Rebecca Hill and Allison Todd are Commended National Merit recipients. More than two-thirds (about 34,000) of the approximately 50,000 high scorers on the PSAT/NMSQT receive Letters of Commendation in recognition of their outstanding academic promise. Commended Students are named on the basis of a nationally applied Selection Index score. Although Commended Students do not continue in the competition for National Merit Scholarships, some of these students do become candidates special scholarships.
About 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

Pictured from left to right: First Row: Allison Todd; Second Row: Cristal Delacruz, Adrian Garcia, Aiden Willis, Kyle Wynne, Sarah Cook; Third Row:  Rebecca Hill and Michael Calhoun