JCPS Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

More than 50 students from the Jefferson County Public School (JCPS) District are among the 16,000 across the country competing for merit scholarships worth about $33 million.

Semifinalists in the 62^nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program were announced last week by the National Merit Scholarship Corp. Semifinalists from JCPS include students from Atherton, Ballard, DuPont Manual, Eastern, Male Traditional and Seneca High. Those students are:

• Atherton High School’s Madison Dalton
• Ballard High School’s William Brennan and Leah Kasdan
• DuPont Manual High School’s Vaannila Annadurai, Andrea Ballena, Clare Bosco, Sylvia Bosco, Austin Bridges, Veronica Chancy, Emily Coffield, John Cullen, Emily Dotson, Nicholas Dudzinski, Joshua Dye, Eleanor Ellis, Ryan Folz, Sara Frigui, Anna Gilbert, Rebecca Goldberg, Catherine Ho, Morgan Horsley, Lavanya Kanneganti, Jacob Keisling, Jumin Kim, Austin Kline, Sanjana Kothari, Rohan Kulkarni, Sofia Labrecque Nieves, Emily Liu, Vincent Liu, Lydia Mason, Diya Mathur, Andrew McFarland, Nicole McGrath, Praharshasai Paladugu, Nelson Penn, Benjamin Ragsdell, Matthew Raj, Sterling Richmond, Abraham Riedel-Mishaan, Nathaniel Stromberg, Rishi Talati, Sneha Thirkannad, Mukund Venkatakrishnan, Carolyn Williams, Callie Wright and Manting Xu
• Eastern High School’s Silas Zoeller
• Male Traditional High School’s Cameron Fontes and Makenzi Mulkins
• Seneca High School’s Chloey Ramsey

“I am extremely proud of these remarkable students and what they have accomplished,” said JCPS Superintendent Dr. Donna Hargens. “They are leaders – both in our schools and in our community. At JCPS, we’re producing some of the brightest students in the state and the country, and the accolades today are a reflection of the hard work of these students as well as the dedicated efforts of our teachers and staff.”

The students were among approximately 1.6 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools who entered the program by taking the 2015 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which serves as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist, the semifinalist and his or her high school must submit a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.

From the approximately 16,000 semifinalists, about 15,000 are expected to advance to the finalist level. Finalists will be announced between April and July of next year.