Last week, the National Scholarship Corporation named 42 Harker seniors as semifinalists in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program, representing 22 percent of the senior class. Of the more than 1.5 million high school juniors who entered the program last year by taking the PSAT/NMSQT, only 1 percent were named semifinalists. Finalists are determined through an application process in which the semifinalist and an official from the semifinalist’s school submit an application detailing criteria such as the semifinalist’s academic record, community participation and awards received. 

This year’s semifinalists are:

Nilisha Baid, Karanvir Bhasin, Manasa Bhimaraju, Elvin Chen, Matthew Chung, Emma Dionne, Preston Ellis, William Fan, Maya Franz, Alissa Gao, Annesh Dastidar, Pascal Han, Fonda Hu, Vivian Jin, Allison John, Katie Li, Jason Lin, Andrew Lu, Claire Luo, Arya Maheshwari, Akshay Manglik, Krishay Mukhija, Vaishnavi Murari, James Pflaging, Utkarsh Priyam, Michelle Si, Aditya Singhvi, Srinath Somasundaram, Andrew Sun, Aditya Tadimeti, Betsy Tian, Annamma Vazhaeparambil, Daniel Wang, N Wang, Sidra Xu, Russell Yang, Sara Yen, Nichoals Yi, Avery Young, Alex Zhai, Weixuan Zhang and Helen Zhu.