The National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced recently that seven Lindbergh High School students have been named Commended Students in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seniors Kaitlyn Behrens, Tyler Castro, William Goetz, Indiana Jancich, Daniel Kovach, Rachel Miyazaki and Lydia Powers are among 34,000 students nationwide who have been recognized for their exceptional academic performance.

Commended Students place among the top 5 percent of more than 1.6 million students who took the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

“This is a great accomplishment,” Lindbergh High Principal Eric Cochran stated in a news release. “The National Merit Scholarship Program requires a tremendous amount of work and these students have demonstrated outstanding potential in their pursuit of academic success.”

Earlier this month, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced that six LHS seniors had been named semifinalists in this year’s program.

Each year, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation partners with more than 400 business organizations and higher education institutions to award $33 million in scholarships.

The goal of the program is to honor the nation’s scholastic champions and encourage the pursuit of academic excellence, according to the release.