Homewood-Flossmoor Community High School District 233 is proud to announce that three members of its senior class — Allie Mangel of Homewood, Andronicus Marati of Homewood and Alessandro Vazquez of Chicago Heights — have been named finalists in this year’s National Merit Scholarship Program. They are three of nearly 15,000 students across the U.S. to receive this honor from the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), based in Evanston. They each are now elibigle to be one of the 7,500 scholarship winners, who will be announced this spring.

This is the 63rd year of the program. Scholarships are underwritten with National Merit’s own funds and by approximately 420 business organizations and high education institutions that share the NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.