Seven Irvine and Huntington Beach students were among nearly 100 National Merit Scholarship winners in the organization's first wave of announcements for the year.
The National Merit Scholarship Corp. will recognize 8,000 students across the country in 2014 with scholarships ranging from $5,000 to $40,000, according to a news release.
About 1.5 million juniors in high schools across the nation entered the merit scholarship competition when they took the 2012 preliminary SAT exam, which served as an initial screening of candidates.