North Fulton Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

FULTON COUNTY, GA — The Fulton County School System said 128 of its students have been named semifinalists in the 64th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, the highest number of any school system in Georgia.

These high school seniors will now continue in the national competition for more than 7,500 Merit Scholarship awards valued at about $31 million.

Announced by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, 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 February, and the scholarship winners will be announced beginning in April.

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

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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.

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.

Fulton County students named semifinalists are:

Alpharetta High School: Richard Cho, Rohit Das, Sidhesh S. Desai, Anushka Dheer, Dheeraj Eidnani, Kaushal Gokare, Syed Haider, Matthew Holmquist, Jake Hopkins, Marilyn Kessinger, Manoj Niverthi, Sean Rager, Ida Vaghefi, Adam Wang, Arthur Yu and Justin Zandstra.

Cambridge High School: Austin T. Farr, Christopher M. Fettes, Caroline K. Redick and Nikita Savant.

Centennial High School: Christine Pang.

Chattahoochee High School: Abhimanyu Aurobindo, Jennifer Bai. James Bischoff, Marylyn Chen, Ridhi Choragudi, Hannah Dominguez, Morgan Giles, Xuanming Gu, Emily Guo, Sung Mo Hong, Vinnie K. Khanna, Andrew Kreitner, Vanisha Kudumuri, Andy Luo, Maanas Purushothapu, Nithyashree Rajasekar, Akash Rudra, Tyler Shin, Raj Srivastava, Shyla Tolani, Nithilan Vincent, Ellie Wong and Harrison Zhu.

Johns Creek High School: Rajath Bappanad, Tyler C. Bierfreund, Angie Chen, Victoria Chen, Hyun Choi,
Jason Gao, William Goldstein, Alexander B. Hayes, Vatan Kapadia, Hojung Kim, Sarah C. McWhirter, Katherine Rolader, Andrew S. Shin, Samuel Song, Neha Subramaniyan, Yuma Tanaka, Rhea Vohra, Julia Wei, Lily Xie, Jacob Young and Sarah Zhang.

Milton High School: Pranav Athimuthu, Anna Bukowski, Maxwell Guo, Niraj Jinan, Erin Joyce, Soham Kar, Rithwik Koppaka, Kayleigh Monahan, Mira E. Mutnick and David Schertz.

North Springs Charter High School: Justin Kaplin, Lindsey Nicholas and Elaine Wen.

Northview High School: Safa Ahmed, Kelsey Ahn, Nathaniel Alemayehu, Alina Baiju, Amshumanth Chakragiri, Mallika Chimpiri, Sruti Chitluri, Olivia L. Cho, Brijal Chokshi, Constantin Claassen, Alexandra Dunn, Annie Z. Feng, Shashank S. Ganeshan, Suraj S. Gubbala, Aniruddha Gupta, Lawrence L. He, Mohammed F. Juneja, Sonia Kalia, Michele Kim, Praneeth Kolichala, Richard Lee, Youngho Lim, Nithya Mahakala, Priun Nagru, Ayush S. Nene, Evan Ouyang, Nidhi Pai, Michelle L. Pang, Tiffany L. Pang, Priya Rajeev, Richa Sehgal, Aayush Shah, Madhusudhan Srinivasan, Sylvia Tang, Amy Tau, Livia I. Tibuleac, Varun R. Vangala, Ankita D. Vayalapalli, Kevin Wang, Simon Yan, Devansh Yerpude, Grace Yu, Alyssa Zhang, Sheri Zhang and Jonathan Zheng.

Riverwood International Charter School: Michelle Stanek.

Roswell High School: Sameer Khan, Lena Krone, and Rachna Sahasrabudhe.

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