A group of seniors from the local high school district have been accepted as semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.

A total of 22 students -- 11 from Mountain View High School and 11 from Los Altos High School -- will now be eligible to become finalists in the prestigious national award program.

"We're really pleased," said Barry Groves, superintendent of the high school district. "These students have probably worked hard for their entire academic careers."

Groves said that about 90 percent of semifinalists will make the cut as finalists. To get there the students must provide the program's selection committee with a an application, copies of transcripts and a letter.

In the past, Groves said, many of Mountain View Los Altos' finalists in the National Merit program have gone on to prestigious universities, such as Harvard, Stanford and Berkeley.

Each year, about 1.5 million students participate in the program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. About 800 juniors across both Mountain View and Los Altos high schools took that test, Groves said.

The semifinalists from Los Altos High School are: Caleb An, Marielle Beaulieu, Mark Cuson, Alexander Kellogg, Edwin Lai, Mark Levin-Gesundheit, Laura Murphy, Benjamin Schneider, Elizabeth Strichartz, Maxwell Wiederholt and Carolyn Yang.

The semifinalists from Mountain View High School are: Andrew Chen, Joshua Cohen, Caroline Davidson, Charles Gwennap, Nina Maksimova, Jay Patterson, Jennifer Payne, Matthew Salinero, Rylan Schaeffer, Akshay Shrivastava and Victoria Sun.