North Fulton Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Staff Report

Over 100 students in the Fulton County School System have been named semifinalists in the 60th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

These scholastically-talented 117 high school seniors now continue in the national competition for more than 7,600 Merit Scholarship awards, a value of approximately $33 million.

These students are:

Alpharetta High School

• Pranov Duggasani
• Joseph Elengickal
• Alison Heffron
• Alan Hesu
• Hope Hong
• Shadman Ibnamasud
• Nicole Izmaylov
• Kristen McClelland
• Alexandria Nickens
• Ankita Raghupathy
• Rajiv Reddy
• Rick Saha
• Nikhil R. Sethi
• Aditya Sood
• Ranjani Sundaresan
• Nagashumrith Vinakollu
• Amy Wang

Cambridge High School

• Sabrina Long

Centennial High School

• Amanda Hamilton
• Ryann Khalil
• Maxwell Roberts
• Kaliq Wang

Chattahoochee High School

• Sungmin An
• Heeseung Choi
• Tara Cooper
• Sahrudh Dharanendra
• Amber Feng
• Christine Feng
• Jun-Kit Ho
• Nirav Ilango
• Shiyao Ji
• Manasa Kadiyala
• Ramya Pathuri
• Amith Punyala
• Nicole Redder
• Preet Shah
• Nikita Varman
• Samuel Weinbach
• Stephanie Wyman

Johns Creek High School

• Sevda Arjomand
• Luke He
• Rachel Kim
• Kelsey Li
• Hana Nazir
• Krishna Sambhu
• Patrick Shin
• Edward Xiao
• Catherine Xie
• Ha Yun Yoon
• Jung Yun Yoon

Milton High School

• Allison Albright
• Kevin Berry
• Patricia Chang
• Tyler Curl
• Akshay Easwaran
• Sean Flanagan
• Brandon Kim
• Christian Kirkup
• Harrison Lee
• Sean Lu
• Sibley Lyndgaard
• Coleman Maberry
• Ryan Salmon
• Andia Shamsaie

North Springs Charter High School

• Lucas Capps
• Veronica Sondervan

Northview High School

• Yahia Ali
• Valerie Avva
• Edward Chen
• Victor L. Chen
• Tarun Daniel
• Dillon Fournier
• Tony Gong
• Connie Huang
• Woo Suk Jang
• Daniel Jiang
• Lillian Jin
• Esther Kwon
• Jin Hee Lee
• Justin Lee
• Seung Seok Lee
• Jonathan Lian
• Cassandra Mullins
• Janani Rammohan
• Da-In Ryoo
• Dhaumya Shah
• Kyung Min Shin
• Joshua Shue
• Sumit Sohani
• Liheng Song
• Harsha Sridhar
• Ziyi Sun
• Puja Tripuraneni
• Shalini Vemuru
• Natasha Venugopal
• Michael Wang
• Oxford Wang
• Rachel Williams
• Patrick Wu
• Di Xia
• Charles Xiao
• Amy Yang
• Albert Zhang
• Rachel Zhu
• Andrew Zou

Riverwood International Charter School

• Jeffrey Hooks
• Ethan Mann
• Luka Marinkovic
• Carolyn Stanek
• Albert Xiong

Roswell High School

• Gavin Hudnall
• Sydney Jerez
• Robert McKenzie
• Jeremy Peterson
• Ramya Prabhakar
• Aditya Ramaswamy
• Mohammed Saqib

Announced by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation on Wednesday, this is the first round of competition for students seeking the distinction of being named a National Merit Scholar and receiving the scholarship money associated with it. Finalists will be named in the winter and the scholarship winners will be announced in the spring.

The students were identified through exceptionally high scores on the PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which they took as juniors.

As semifinalists, the students now must fulfill several requirements in order to advance to the finalist round. They must have a record of high academic performance, be endorsed and recommended by their school leadership and earn SAT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance.

A detailed scholarship application, which includes the student’s self-descriptive essay and information about his or her participation and leadership in school and community activities, also must be submitted.

Semifinalists for the 2015 National Achievement Scholarship Program, a similar program for academically gifted African-American high school students, will be named later this month.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation conducts the annual National Merit Scholarship and National Achievement Scholarship programs. Scholarships awarded through the programs are underwritten by business organizations and higher education institutions, as well as by the organization’s own funds.

(Photo credit: Shutterstock)