Dozens of Sammamish, Issaquah Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) announced 12 students from Sammamish and 11 Issaquah High School students qualified as semifinalists in the 59th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

A total of 16,000 academically talented high school seniors nationwide have qualified. About 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February they will be notified of this designation. These students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,000 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $35 million, that will be offered next spring.

Students qualified for these awards by completing the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an 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.

Issaquah High School had 11 NMSC Semifinalists: Ball, Catherine J.; Brunette, Jacob P.; Gellatly, John A.; Hiray, Suyash S.; McConnell, Hannah E.; Panah, Dakota R.; Son, Wooyang; Storm, Audrey R.; Tseng, Thomas; Unson, Madison B.; Vaska, Grant K.

Redmond High School had the highest number of recipients in the Lake Washington School District, with 17 students named as semifinalists.

Lake Washington School District National Merit Semifinalists:

Eastlake High School: Nikhil Auradkar (Sammamish), Richard Baron (Sammamish), Ryan Holmdahl (Redmond), James McCutcheon (Sammamish), Amanda Qu (Sammamish), Nicholas Randolph (Sammamish) and Nikila Venugopal (Sammamish).

International Community School: Jack Eggleston (Redmond), Brandon McNerney (Sammamish), Aishwarya Nirmal (Redmond), Kathleen Park (Sammamish) and Anwell Wang (Redmond).

Juanita High School: Gloria Liu (Redmond) Lake Washington High School: Mark Hedreen (Kirkland) and Hayden Stockwell (Kirkland)

Redmond High School: Cameron Akker (Sammamish), Sahana Cidambi (Redmond), Anton de Leon (Redmond), Aaron Dietrich (Sammamish), Sarang Joshi (Redmond), Dasha Kadatch (Redmond), Samhita Karnati (Sammamish), Andrew Li (Sammamish), Nathan Moon (Redmond), Meghana Noonavath (Redmond), Hannah Parish (Redmond), Jennifer Perry (Redmond), Deanna Ren (Redmond), Margaret Robinson (Redmond), Emily Rockhill (Redmond), Hannah Yang (Redmond)and Alex Zhou (Redmond).