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A total of 45 Harker seniors, 24 percent of the class of 190, were named semifinalists in the 2017 National Merit Scholarship Program, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. (NMSC) announced on Sept. 14. They are among 16,000 semifinalists out 1.6 million students who entered the program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) in their junior year. National Merit semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of U.S. high school students.
Additionally, Harker had 65 students who placed in the top 3 percent of test takers nationwide, whom the NMSC has recognized as Commended Students. This number, combined with the number of semifinalists, brings the number of Harker seniors recognized by National Merit to 110, or 58% of the Class of 2017.
This year’s semifinalists are:
Sana Aladin, Kai-Siang Ang, Steven Cao, Cuebeom Choi, Aditya Dhar, Trisha Dwivedi, Ria Gandhi, Rishab Gargeya, Catherine Huang, Zhuoying Huang, Neymika Jain, Preethi Kandappan, Soham Khan, Angela Kim, Winifred Li, Lauren Liu, Rishi Maheshwari, Sanjana Marce, Colt McNealy, Connie Miao, Anuva Mittal, Kshithija Mulam, Sandip Nirmel, Judy Pan, Srivatsav Pyda, Divya Rajasekharan, Elizabeth Rensin, Alayna Richmond, Andrew Rule, Venkat Sankar, Manan Shah, Vedaad Shakib, Amrita Singh, Scott Song, Meilan Steimle, Arjun Subramaniam, Arnav Tandon, Andrew Tierno, Molly Wancewicz, Peter Wu, Albert Xu, Raymond Xu, Austin Zhang, David Zhu and Tiffany Zhu.
To become finalists, semifinalists must submit a scholarship application that details their academic record, community involvement, leadership qualities and another criteria. Winners of National Merit scholarships will be notified in spring 2017.