15 Novi Students Named National Merit Scholar Semifinalists

More than a dozen students have been named National Merit Scholar Semifinalists, according to a press release the National Merit Scholarship Corporation released Wednesday.

The semifinalists are as follows:

• Rebecca S. Chen
• Hannah Fan
• Nishant Kakar
• Timothy A. MacPherson
• Karthik Munugala
• Akhil Nistala
• Kenta Onimura
• Prasanti S. Ravipati
• Jiahui Ren
• Vidya C. Sekaran
• Hyunjoon Song
• Krithika Swaminathan
• Bhavana Tetali
• Mark C. Xu
• Aparna S. Yechoor

The students are among 16,000 students chosen nationwide in the 58th annual program. These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $32 million that will be offered next spring. To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the finalist level of the competition.

About 90 percent of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and more than half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring SAT entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.