Neighbor News
Nine Newark Academy Students are 2026 National Merit Semifinalists
Four Livingston residents earned National Merit Honors
Livingston, NJ — Newark Academy, a 6-12 independent school in Livingston, NJ, is proud to announce that nine current seniors, including one Livingston resident, were named 2026 National Merit Semifinalists, joining 16,000 students across the country.
The semifinalists include Livingston's Jacob Brodsky, Sophie Hu, Daniel Ikuno, Matthew Lee, Andrew Lu, Tyler Ren, Aadit Shrivastava, Christina Silva and Tyler Suwankosai. These students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,930 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring.
NA’s nine semifinalists were among the 38 seniors who were named National Merit Commended Students for placing among the top 50,000 students who entered the competition. The Commended Students from Livingston are Joshua Chernin, Sophia Ha and Ryan Zhu.
Find out what's happening in Livingstonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
Other NA seniors named National Merit Commended Students include: Kunal Arora, Xavier Atwell, Luke Betlow, Krisha Chhabra, Aami Dahiya, Olivia Dai, Alexander Dang, Reagan Edwards, Talia Elwyn, Ayotunde Fagbemi, Sloane Finger, Gibson Fischer, Aryan Grover, Camille Hacking, Natalie Kapferer, Evan Lai, Quinn Miller, Connor Polen, Diya Ramachandran, Gina Schreier, Yulin Tang, Vedh Vinayak, Caspar von Hollen, Zhihe Yin, Alexis Zhang and Alexander Zhukov.
The National Merit Scholarship Program is an academic competition that recognizes and provides scholarships to students. Each year, approximately 1.3 million high school juniors take the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) to enter the program.
Find out what's happening in Livingstonfor free with the latest updates from Patch.
About Newark Academy: Founded in 1774, NA is one of the nation’s oldest day schools and older than our country. For more than 250 years, Newark Academy has been committed to innovative, relationship-centered teaching and learning, delivering a best-in-class education. Newark Academy’s motto, “Ad Lumen” — meaning “toward the light,” serves as the school’s guiding principle. The school’s approach has illuminated the potential in generations of students by empowering them to pursue their passions and achieve excellence both inside and outside the classroom. For more information about Newark Academy, visit www.newarka.edu.
