Dozens of Saratoga students named National Merit semifinalists

Seniors at Prospect, Saratoga high schools in running for scholarships.

Thirty-nine Saratoga students are among nearly 1,140 Bay Area students named as semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program, a countrywide competition among high school seniors.

Calvin J. Cha, Karen W. Gong,  Sania Jain, Prital S. Jariwala, Chienyu Sun and Sophia Tian of Prospect High School and Advaith Avadhanam, Sam M. Bai, Avik Belenje, Lynn Dai, Sophia Deng, Sanjoli Gupta, Yanis J. Herne, Victoria X. Hu, Emily Hung,  Madeline Hung, Yashom Kapoor, Zeyneb N. Kaya, Dev Krishnamoorthy, Katelyn Y. Lee, Bryan M. Li, Xiaoran Li, Andrew Lin, Alyssa Liu, Jonny J. Luo, Nikhil Mathihalli, Eric Y. Miao, Uttara Natarajan, Samik Pattanayak, Dhilon A. Prasad, Dhrithi L. Rachepalli, Rushil Saraf, Jarrett P. Singh, Anais Sobrier, Shaolun Sun, Nidhi Vadlamudi, Joseph Z. Wang, Aiden Ye and Matthew W. Zhang of Saratoga High School are among 16,000 semifinalists across the country — less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors — who will now be considered for about 7,140 scholarships worth nearly $28 million next spring.

It’s the third-to-last step in the process. About 95% of semifinalists are expected to be named finalists, and approximately half of those finalists will earn a scholarship. Over 1.3 million high school juniors in 21,000 high schools entered the competition through the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, or PSAT, which serves as the initial screening of program entrants. The semifinalists announced this week include the highest-scoring students in each state.