14 District 99 Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

DOWNERS GROVE, IL — Fourteen District 99 students were named as semifinalists in the 70th National Merit Scholarship Program on Wednesday, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced.

The Downers Grove North students who are among the 16,000 semifinalists nationwide are:

• Syed Ahmed
• Gabriel Deaton
• Maya Engel
• Carly Ermitage
• Varun Ganesh
• William Mielke
• Melody Parker
• Ryan Pawkik
• Meaghan Warnett
• Zander Yee

The Downers Grove South semifinalists are:

• Zevian Davis
• Alessio LoBello
• Sakthi Rajeshkumar
• Alyssad Zoerb

Of the 16,000 semifinalists, 6,870 will be chosen to share nearly $26 million in scholarship money, which will be announced in spring 2025.

According to the news release, to be considered for a scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition. About 95 percent of semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit scholarship.

More than 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, including the highest-scoring entrants in each state, according to National Merit.

Winners will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join nearly 382,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

Patch editor Amie Schaenzer contributed to this report.