Del Mar and Carmel Valley Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

Approximately 1.5 million high school juniors take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). Out of those students, 16,000 were named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists and from those, 69 hail from Del Mar and Carmel Valley schools.

Besides just having a high score, a semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test, according to a press release form the National Merit Scholarship Program.

The academically-talented high schoolers, who are now seniors, have an opportunity to continue in the competition for 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million.

Winners will be announced beginning in April. 

Here's a list of students from Del Mar and Carmel Valley who will advance to the next round: 

Canyon Crest Academy

Baru, Nachiketa A.

Bell, Hannah

Chen, Jesse L.

Cunningham, Nicholas R.

Friedman, Matthew A.

Jam, Arash

Jiao, Tiantian

Lin, Nicole

McGrath, Sean

Oh, Seung Mi

Rao, Vaishnavi L.

Ray Avalani, Bianca

Rehan, Taimur M.

Schade, Eric B.

See, Claudia

Shi, Jingwei

Shim, Kristen Y.

Swayze, Thomas E.

Wang, Jeffery R.

Wu, Alice S.

Xiao, Laura J.

Yue, Jeffery

Zhang, Vivian W.

Zhang, Yenny S.

Zhu, Frank

Cathedral Catholic High School

Clark, Cassidy A.

Rosenburg, Michael L.

Thomas, Reeny M.

Francis W. Parker School

Frailey, Zachary S.

Torrey Pines High School

Alpert, Robert B.

Chen, Chinghwa

Chen, Lucy Y.

Chen, Lydia

Cheng, Melodyanne Y.

Fan, Bob

Gao, Amanda C.

Guo, Nick

Hakim, Victor D.

Helali, Joshua S.

Hsu, Karen D.

Jin, Thomas

Kuan, Rebecca

Lee, Hanna

Lee, Hye-In

Lee, Myunghee

Li, Jenny

Li, Rachel S.

Liu, Julia

Liu, Justin C.

Lu, Benjamin Y.

Lu, Sunny

Mao, Louise

Moon, Jieun

Nalabolu, Sujith

Paik, Choohyun

Pascal, Florine J.

Phuong, Joseph

Pubbi, Parul

Schneider, Harrison

Sharma, Anika

Shi, Catherine Y.

Shu, Samuel P.

Wang, Chao-Chien

Wu, Angela

Yang, Charlie L.

Yang, Katharine

You, Sophie

Zheng, David R.

Zhong, Sarah M.

Zou, Angela