More National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists, Los Altos, LAH

Los Altos Patch continues to publish lists of local semi-finalists in the 58th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

The national semi-finalist list was released Sept. 12 in the academically prestigious competition. Those students will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $48 million that will be offered next spring.

The 48 students from three public schools named in this article include 33 students from Gunn High School, 14 from Homestead High School and one homeschooled student.

Last Saturday, Patch published a list of 25 student semi-finalists from the Mountain View - Los Altos Union High School District.

About 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2013 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2011 Preliminary sat/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test last spring, said to Eileen Artimakis, a spokeswoman for the National Merit Scholarship Program. The nationwide pool of semi-finalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. About 90 percent of the semi-finalists go on to become finalists, she said.

The following semi-finalist lists are from public schools serving Los Altos and Los Altos Hills residents. It also includes a one home-schooled Los Altos resident who has appeared in previous a Patch story about local girls competing in the China Girls Mathematical Olympiad.

Artimakis said that home-schooled students have been gradually increasing in the semi-finalists ranks over the past 20 years, and holding steady in numbers over the last several year. Part of the reason for the increase, she said, is that home-schooled students have become more aware of what was required to be eligible in the program. Those students must arrange to take the tests at a neighbor school where tests are proctored to be eligible, such as at Los Altos High School, for example. The National Merit Scholarship Program encourages neighbor schools to host home-schooled students for the test-taking, she said.

Next list: Private schools.

 

HOMESCHOOL

Burks, Rebecca J.

 

HENRY M. GUNN HIGH SCHOOL

 Bhadkamkar, Devyani

 Bhansali, Rohil

 Cheng, Edward

 Grossman, Tatiana J.

 Hinson, Rosemary

 Huang, Peter

 Huang, Roya E.

 Huang, Sarah

 Imesheva, Valeriya

 Jacobsen, Nicole A.

 Jiang, Helen

 Kim, Ethan

 Kim, Jesse

 Lee, Hye Y.

 Li, Alice W.

 Li, Christine S.

 Lin, Cindy S.

 Miner, Spencer G.

 Qin, Yi

 Rajan, Anupama

 Redfield, Emily H.

 Shiao, Rani

 Sommer, Anne

 Steinberg, Benjamin M.

 Tao, Laura

 Townsend, Laura L.

 Tsai, Lillian Y.

 Waliman, Matthew
 Wu, Megan

 Yan, Elizabeth M.

 Yu, George

 Yu, William

 Zu, Katherine L.

 

HOMESTEAD H. S.

Alexander, Katherine M.

Chen, Miranda

Ferrari, Matthew R.

Gao, Jing-Lun

Gizdarski, Konstantin E.

Gopalakrishnan, Monisha

Ho, Joanna

Lai, Tanner

Lin, Harrison L.

Sochor, Daniel

Zeng, Brian

Zhang, Xijing

Zhao, Darren

Zhou, Alice