Lena got selected into the school's Scholastic Achievement Team - which is completely unrelated to the Scholastic Ball Team, where she's a permanent fixture for two years now, and which is the quiz team.
This is just the creme de la creme of the best kids in school, and she ranks 5 (along with another guy). The lady who gave out the papers to sign said "ok, fill the page two and sign it, you know the drill" - because most of them are in it third time, since 10th grade. Lena is a noob here.
- You must have improved this year if they got you in the team now.
- I'm doing just the same as before.
The implied "but it's been finally noticed" remained unspoken.
The sponsor of these teams is the local newspaper, who picks about five kids out of about 500 such team members in the area, and pays them a scholarship. Well, not to them, but to the colleges they enroll, provided these are colleges in the area (including NE North Carolina, which also counts as local).
This could be coming from some of her science teachers, probably the chemist or physicist (and surely not the overly Christian "see how this cell is perfect - it's obvious God made it" biologist), or maybe the psychology guy. It would be the top irony if she got it, and then got a call from the paper to say a few words - and we already went home. Nina would give them our phone there, or skype ID, and it would be very interesting to see what would they write and what would happen with the grant :).