National Merit Scholarship semifinalist list includes 72 Poway Unified high school seniors

Poway Unified School District has 72 students among the approximately 16,000 students nationwide on the National Merit Scholarship semifinalist list.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation released the list on Sept. 9, saying the “academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,400 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring.”

Officials said about 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to advance to the finalist stage, and about half of those will receive a scholarship and Merit Scholar title. The finalist criteria includes academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, plus honors and awards received. They must also be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn high SAT scores.

The scholarship program, established in 1955, had around 1.5 million juniors from more than 22,000 high schools enter the competition by taking the 2014 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). The semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of this year’s high school seniors nationwide and the number of semifinalists per state is proportional to their state’s percentage of graduating seniors in the country.

Local 2016 semifinalists are:

Del Norte High: Kevin J. An, Arman Arbab, Brian A. Casey, Ahana Chakraborty, Tina Y. Chen, Saeed Ghassemzadeh, Jane J. Huang, Lillian Huang, Lindsey Kang, Thomas J. Kim, Aishwarya A. Kudrimoti, Grace Y. Li, Joanna Liu, Vincent D. Ngo, Alexander G. Ramsayer, Ellen V. Shea, Joe Y. Sun, Gokul Swamy, Revati J. Thatte, Nicholas F. Wong, Carolyn N. Wu, Yuqing Yang, Liming Zheng, Andrew B. Zhou and Cassie Zhu.

Mt. Carmel High: Victoria J. Moran, Bharat Pradeep, Minh-Khoa Tran and Amy A. Tu.

Poway High: Jacob W. Prince and Camille M. Xue.

Rancho Bernardo High: Sachin Betrabet, Lynn Bi, Tristan F. Caparas, Kevin Hu, Jiashen G. Lu, Isabella T. Ortiz, Amir A. Rezvani, Nicholas Z. Rui, Sydney G. Yang and Qing Lan Zhao.

Westview High: Arvin Bhattacharya, Tyler A. Chang, Jennifer L. Chen, Jooeun Cho, Seungeun Cho, Sarah T. Chou, Catherine Fan, Andrew Fratian, Jacqueline Guy, Helen Y. Jin, Jason J. Kang, Ozair I. Khan, Franklin Kong, Wanfei Kwan, Rae Lan, Ha Eun Lee, Justin D. Li, Maia L. Li, Emily Lin, Rebecca Liu, Mark T. Nasielski, Hannah Y. Oikawa, Bansi N. Parekh, Steven Pineda, Edward Qiao, Robert L. Quitt, Kevin Y. Sun, Nathan L. Tran, Henry Z. Xu, Brandon M. Zhang and Jennifer N. Zhuang.