North Fairfax News

Two Hundred Thirty-Seven FCPS Students Are 2023 National Merit Semifinalists

Two hundred thirty-seven students from 18 Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) are among the semifinalists named by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for 2023. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), which also serves as the Governor’s Regional School for Northern Virginia, has 132 semifinalists.

All semifinalists are eligible to compete for 7,500 National Merit Scholarship awards worth nearly $28 million, to be awarded in spring 2023. Semifinalists advance to finalist standing in the competition by meeting high academic standards and other requirements including a recommendation from a high school official.

Fairfax County Public Schools 2023 National Merit semifinalists are: 

• Centreville High School: Prabhas Adivi, Ethan Park, Megan Rudo.
• Chantilly High School: Katelyn M P. Chu, Aaditya Khurana, Rachel Lee, Andy Liang, Sudeep Orvoy, Vivek Ramakrishna, Ryan Seo, Mahika Sharma, Advaith Thirumalai, Nihar Xavier.
• Edison High School: Maya Pattison.
• Fairfax High School: Jeffrey Eum, Lucas Pederson.
• Herndon High School: Alec Agayan.
• Lake Braddock Secondary School: Andrey Dobson, Roy Kim, Rohan Puri, Christopher Ryu.
• Langley High School: Josephine Amspaugh, Ethan Bhatia, Michael Dzwonczyk, David Han, Ashley Khang, Eliana Lafleur, Amelia Lee, Stephanie Ma, Shriya Mani, Connor Oakes, Sumrath Pahwa, Alexander Pomper, Daliya Rizvi, Shaan Sabharwal, Jason Zhang.
• Lewis High School: Jason Tung.
• Madison High School: Aditya Behera, Selena Cheung, Zachary Conroy, Nayan Iyer, Anne Krieger, Nathaniel Morin, Jennifer Munyan, John Obermann, Emery Stratman, Qijie Sun, Hannah Yeom.
• Marshall High School: Suhani Desai, Dale Devinney, Natalie Ghofrany, Aakashi Jain, Deborah Kim, Eujin Lee, Charles McDermott.
• McLean High School: John Apigian, Nandita Boddu, Jeffrey Cheng, Noah Chin, Shubham Dey, Tejini Holavanahali, Everly Johnston, Yeonsu Ju, Sianna Khandhar, Kristina Knauss, Genavive Lotfi, Anna Raymond, Emanuel Rouvelas, Donghwa Shin, Zaylie Tamashiro, David Vergano, Michael Wang, Benjamin Woods, Emma Yang, Ethan Ye, Olivia Zhang, Ethan Zhou.
• Oakton High School: Pari Agarwala, Tina Gao, Elise Ha, Thomas Huitema, Cindy Li, Sean Noh, Lois Park, Iliana Rong, Ashley Shin, Theodore Yi, Alyssa Zhang.
• Robinson Secondary School: Julia Davenport, Mary Laun.
• Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST): Suhani Aggarwal, Gabriel Ascoli, Rishik Balerao, Ananya Bandaru, Tarini Basireddy, Andrei Basto, Elise Bejtlich, Manav Bharath, Tanvi Bhave, Ethan Caldwell, Bradley Cao, Liam Carey, Noah Cha, Ellie Chen, Jeffrey Chen, Katelyn Chen, Qi Wei Chen, Ethan Chitturi, Jessica Chung, Garrett Cook, Riley Cooper, Audrey Czarnecki, Sauman Das, Vivian Denny, Kenneth Do, Audhav Durai, Amit Sai Erraguntla, Elisabeth Everhart, Daphne Feigin, Vivian Feng, Khushi Garg, Sophia Go, Grace Guan, Keira Hansen, Connor Harris, Katherine Hartley, Bryan Hong, Valentina Hong, Alan Hsu, Rachel Huang, Lauren Hyde, Arnav Jain, Tanish Jain, Timothy Johanson, Tanmai Kalisipudi, Mariska Kassi, Clara Kim, Matthew Kim, Sungjoon Kim, Sunglae Kim, Taein Kim, Sophia King, Irene Ko, Tejaswi Koduru, Aditya Kompella, Vishal Kotha, Anurag Kumar, Brian Lai, Jean Lavigne Du Cadet, Elliott Lee, Jordan Lee, Alex Li, Derek Li, Elizabeth Li, Elina Liu, Johanna Lohmus, Maya Makonnen, Nicolas Makovnik, Deccan Maniam, Vihaan Mathur, Satvik Matta, Zachris Matthews, Ehlaina McCaskill, Connor McKenzie, Katherine Merrill, Krisha Pahwa, Mulan Pan, Sravya Patibandla, Ridhi Pendyala, Cindy Peng, Nikhil Pesaladinne, Subrat Poudel, Keenan Powell, Aryan Rajput, Shashwat Rao, Prisha Ray, Anika Rekulapelli, Laura Ridgway, Cyrus Rivers, Nimesh Rudra, Thrisha Sakamuri, Isha Satapathy, Benoy Sen, Keertana Senthilkumar, Nihal Shah, Saloni Shah, Shruti Shah, Jerry Sheng, Andrew Shi, Savar Shrivastava, Mira Singh, Rishi Sripathi, Dhanbee Suh, Selina Sun, Anisha Talreja, Lynn Tao, Johnathan Tong, Henry Toth, Vincent Trang, Conan Ugaz, Suraj Vaddi, Niyathi Vadlapatla, Dante Valencia, Aditya Vasantharao, Akshay Vellore, Yuktha Vemula, Jonathan Vu, Claire Wang, Jessica Wang, Luke Wang, Kaia Wright, Richard Xu, Cindy Yang, Alexander Yao, Sophia Yao, Angela Zhang, Megan Zhang, Spencer Zheng, Brian Zhou, Elise Zhu, Isabella Zhu, Lilian Zhu.
• West Potomac High School: Fiona French, Saira Nagda.
• West Springfield High School: Holden Browne, Jacob Hong.
• Westfield High School: Utkarsh Bansal, Joshua Cho, Danica Dougan, Srihan Kotnana, Sahil Patel.
• Woodson High School: James Brady, Maryam Harahsheh, Evelyn Nelson-Pennebaker, Andreas Paraskevopoulos, Yilin Tan, Emily Tang. 

More than 16,000 high school seniors were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for 2023. More than 1.5 million juniors entered the 2023 National Merit program by taking the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which serves as the initial screen of program entrants.  

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors. These determinations are made by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, not FCPS or individual schools.

Three types of Merit Scholarship awards will be offered in 2023: National Merit $2,500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships.

Merit Scholarship winners will be announced next spring.

Original source can be found here