All five schools in the Fremont Union High School District made a strong showing in the 67th annual National Merit Scholarship program, with dozens of students from each campus among 16,000 semifinalists across the country.
The district serves Cupertino and Sunnyvale, as well as areas of San Jose, Los Altos, Saratoga, and Santa Clara.
The semifinalists are now in the running for some 7,500 scholarships, each worth $2,500, that will be offered next spring. They qualified for the awards last year by taking the preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. About 15,000 are expected to become finalists.
Cupertino residents Nathan A. and Shiva A. Oswal, who are homeschooled, also qualified as National Merit semifinalists, as did Johan Y. Ko, Yitao Li, Joylyn Pan and Felicity H. Tien from The King’s Academy in Sunnyvale.
From the Fremont Union High School District, semifinalists include Fremont High School students Shriya R. Char, Abhinav Gupta, Nikhil Jagota, Gautham Kishore, Medha Kotra, Arjun Krishnan and Kevin K. Yang.
Last fall, 79 students from the Lynbrook High School in West San Jose were named National Merit Semifinalist award, making Lynbrook the school with most semifinalists in California. The school boasts 70 semifinalists this year:
Ruhi Aggarwal, Krishna Ajjarapu, Vivek T. Alumootil, Rachana Aluri, Marcus Au, Raeed W. Azom, Nitish Bansal, Anirudh Bharadwaj, Siddharth Chattoraj, Belinda Chen, Ian D. Chen, Sharlene Chen, Sophie A. Chen, Emma L. Constable, Austin A. Cruz, Marissa H. Dai, Aryan Dwivedi;
Michael Florip, Anna Z. Han, Kyle P. He, Angela Hu, Anwen Huang, Arianna Huang, William Huang, You Qi Huang, Junhyeong Jeong, Angela K. Jiao, Tim Jing, Aaryan Kainth, Rishi Kodavati, Diana Kohr, Lauraine Z. Kong;
Chris S.Lee, Kevin Li, Thomas Li, Joe J. Lin, Craig Liu, Sannath S. Mathapathi, Aarushi Mehrotra, Andrew K. Min, Bhuvana R. Mukkamala, Oliver X. Ni, Hasitha S. Nimmagadda, Karissa Ning, Paurush Pandey, Reina Pradhan, Nidhi Raviprasad; Oviya Seeniraj, Shailesh Senthil Kumar, Rohil Shah, Raymond Shao, Sumedh M. Shenoy, Albert S. Tam, Jocelyn R. Tao, Tanvi Thoria, Praharshitha V. Thumati;
David Y. Wang, Yucia Wong, Kyle D. Wyatt, Benjamin C. Xu, Eric Yan, Leo L. Yang, Selena S. Yao, Brandon Yuan, Jiatian Yuan, Alexander Zhang, Ellen Zhang, Luke Y. Zhao and Kevin R. Zhu.
Monta Vista High School also made an impressive showing with 56 semifinalists: Krish Agarwal, Shriya Anant, Samantha W. Au, Tejas K. Bharadwaj, Varchas K. Bharadwaj, Advait Budaraju, Ajit Chamraj, Michelle Chen, Ethan H. Crofut, Anushka R. De, Michael J. Ding, Suryaansh V. Dongre, Sophia Y. Fu, Manasi Ganti, Sanya Garg, Elizabeth J. Ge, Devin Gupta, Sanya Gupta, Sanjana S. Jilla;
Srividhya Kalimani, Ojas Mahavir Karnavat, Sotirios N. Kougiouris, Anoushka Lakshmi, Jefferson N. Le, Ryan Li, Victor Li, Joy J. Liu, Sophia W. Liu, Grace Mao, Jean M. Mattekatt, Jeffrey Meng, Siddhartha Mishra, Onkaar Paul;
Saee Ranade, Riya Ranjan, Arnav S. Rathee, Ananya Rupanagunta, Joseph Seok, Hiranya A. Sundar, Lavanya M. Sundar, Samika Swamy, William Y. Tang, Ansley A. Tsai, Trisha R. Venkat, Malavika Vutukuru, Nathan R. Wang;
Edwin Xie, Andy Xu, Christen J. Yang, Claire Yang, Dylan M. Yang, Alexander X. Yao, Thomas Z. Yu, Joseph Zhang, Jennifer N. Zhao and Cindy R. Zou.
The district’s other two high schools also held their own in the semifinal round. The qualifiers at Cupertino High School are Akshay Attaluri, Garima Bansal, Ananya Batra, Anoop Bhat, Amulya Bhattaram, Loden J. Campbell, Michael K. Chian, Krisha K. Chokshi, Angela Deng, Andrew Gao, Domitille O. Guerard, Kunal Gupta, Jingxuan Hu, Vedf Joshi;
Tanvi R. Kamath, Kriti Kaushal, Christina H. Kim, Kelly N. Kim, Jason Li, Adrian Liu, Max Liu, Tristan Liu, Ashvin Loghashankar, Saloni Mahajan, Sean E. Miranda, Ritika Nayan, Joanna S. Poon;
David Qiao, Juliet G. Shearin, Michael M. Song, Arrdya Srivastav, Mridhula J. Thyagarajan, Gilford Y. Ting, Aadhitya S. Tiruthani, Connor A. van Huijgevoort, Erin L. Wang, Max Wang and Alysa Xu.
Homestead High School semifinalists are Jena A. Alsup, Nicholas C. Bilsborrow, Jacquelyn Cao, Ellen M. Cheng, Dainie Choi, Raymond M. Feng, Allison B. Fergason, Michael P. Ferolito, Kyle Fu, Kaylee E. Gallagher, Julia Gu, Stephanie Hsing;
Emiline J. Labbe, Jennifer Y. Lee, Kristen Lee, Marissa Lee, Siwon E. Lee, Samuel E. Leistiko, Helen Li, Andre Mao, Jay S. Paek, Colin C. Stillman, Adithi Sumitran, Kyra Sunil, Yelin E. Tahk, Martin Wu, Jacob L. Zhang and David Zhao.
