The Little Rock School District has 13 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists this year, including 12 from Central High School. The district announced the results in September, noting that just a third of the top 50,000 scorers on the national qualifying test achieve the distinction. Another four students received letters of commendation from the National Merit Scholarship Corp.

Kevin Nguyen of Parkview Magnet High School joined Central’s honored dozen: Karina Bao, Evalyn Berleant, Hannah Cozart, Andrew He, Juliette Jung, Ankush Patel, Savannah Seupaul, Shayan Smani, Zachary Thiher, Katherine Walters, Zixin Ye and Ayman Yousef.

The commended students, all from Central High, were Elisabeth Bates, Evan Greenfield, Wiejia Shi and Logan Siems.