Dozens of San Jose students among National Merit semifinalists

Dozens of students from public and private high schools in San Jose’s Willow Glen, Rose Garden and Almaden Valley neighborhoods are among nearly 1,140 Bay Area high school seniors named as semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. These students are among 16,000 semifinalists across the nation — less than 1% of the nation’s high school seniors — who will now be considered for around 7,140 scholarships worth nearly $28 million next spring.

It’s the third-to-last step in the process. About 95% of semifinalists are expected to be named finalists, and approximately half of those finalists will earn a scholarship. Over 1.3 million high school juniors in 21,000 high schools entered the competition through the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, or PSAT, which serves as the initial screening of program entrants. The semifinalists announced this week include the highest-scoring students in each state.

In the Rose Garden area, the semifinalists from Basis Independent Silicon Valley are Akshaya A. Ajan, Paras Goel, Alina Huang, Robert Ji, Shreyas Kapavarapu, Saanchi Kapoor, Nivedita P. Kripalani, Ethan Y. Liu, Shreyas M. Nanjanagud, Alyssa E. Naoumov, Maggie J. Peng, Max Polosky, Maya Sriram, Anoushka A. Tamhane, Caitlyn N. Tom, Brandon M. Tsai, Shivaani Venkatachalam, Achyuth K. Vivek, Ellie Xi, Paulina Xu, Ivan Y. Zhang and Meryl Zhang.

Semifinalists from Bellarmine College Preparatory are Samuel Y. Arthur, Eddie J. Bae, Aneesh Bairagi, Saketh R. Dasaradhi, Gavin L. Griffin, Andrew S. Huang, Surya S. Krishnapillai, Aswin Surya, Andrew Wen and Daniel M. Yim.