Two Mars High School students were named finalists in the 2018 National Merit Scholarship Program.

Seniors Deepayan Patra and JonPaul Plesniak will enter a pool of 15,000 finalists, from which 7,500 students will be selected to receive 2018 National Merit Scholarships.

In fall 2017, the students were named a program semifinalist, after placing among the top 16,000 high school students who entered the 2018 competition by taking the 2016 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of each state's high school seniors.