Several students from the Triangle have been named candidates in the 2013 U.S. Presidential Scholars Program.

They were among 3,000 seniors nationwide chosen for the program, which will select 500 semifinalists in April. One male and one female student from each state will be named finalists, receiving the Presidential Scholars Medallion and an invitation to Washington, D.C., in June for a ceremony in their honor and activities with elected officials. Students are selected on the basis of academic and artistic achievements, leadership, character and involvement in community and school activities.

Here are the candidates from our area, listed by hometown:

Apex: Jonathan M. Cookmeyer, Raleigh Charter High School, and Daniel G. Ghan, Apex High School.

Carrboro: Ashley Burnette, Chapel Hill High School.

Cary: Jeffrey An, Jessica Wan and Kira A. Wegner-Clemens of Green Hope High School; Alison O. Chang, Ashwin Monian and Jin H. Yoon of N.C. School of Science and Mathematics; Joshua D. Horowitz, Cary High School; Dhruv K. Jain and Amy J. Xu of Enloe High School; Nicole Lu, Taft School; Coleton Musciano and Shiven Srivastava of Panther Creek High School; Jonathan Tseng, Raleigh Charter High School.

Chapel Hill: Hannah H. Blackburn, Max Dejong, Thomas H. Greer, Shiyi Li and Jonathan T. Siekierski of Chapel Hill High School; Nathan H. Cho, Eleanor Funkhouser, Mitchell A. Gelpi, Kelly Jiang, Sung-Hoon Kim, Dylan J. Peterson, Jacob A. Reed (candidate for Presidential Scholar in the Arts), Casey K. Smith, Xingchen Wang and Maggie Xing of East Chapel Hill High School; Jessica S. Gao, Anne K. Kelley, Param Sidhu and Carl Yin of N.C. School of Science and Mathematics; Nivedita Sankar, Durham Academy Upper School.

Clayton: Danielle M. Siegert, Raleigh Charter High School.

Durham: Nicholas R. Pruthi, Durham Academy Upper School.

Morrisville: Pooja S. Mehta, Raleigh Charter High School.

Raleigh: William H. Ge, Jason Y. Liang and Emmalee M. Todd of N.C. School of Science and Mathematics; Alexander R. Hudson, Broughton High School; Rita Meganck, Athens Drive High School; Shobana S. Subramanian, Raleigh Charter High School; Akil Guruparan, Enloe High School.

Wake Forest: Hannah Moyles, Wake Forest-Rolesville High School.

From outside the Triangle, but attending the N.C. School of Science and Mathematics in Durham, are Joshua W. Mu of Charlotte, Fiona C. Lynch of Davidson, Andrew H. Zhang of Greensboro, Jade C. Lu of Greenville, Eric R. Wang of Jamestown, Nathaniel M. Putnam of Southern Pines, Dean Wey-Wey Su of Wilmington and Patrick C. McKeen and Jaehoon K. Jung of Winston-Salem.