WESTPORT — Eleven members of the Staples High School Class of 2024 have qualified as semifinalists in the 69th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

Those Staples seniors include: Emerson C. Briggs, Leigh M. Foran, Dania A. Hemdan, Peter J. Loranger and Ellen Ou.

Also, Surya K. Rao, Jameson K. Russell, Ella M. Tobben, Elizabeth Turner, Darren T. Weng and Gabriel Weng.

In addition, Spencer Neckritz, a Westport resident who attends King School in Stamford, also qualified as a National Merit semifinalist.

The Westport students are among about 16,000 scholarship semifinalists nationally — fewer than 1 percent of more than 1.5 million students who took the PSAT/NMSQT qualifying exam — now considered for 7,140 National Merit scholarships worth more than $28 million that will be awarded next spring.