60 Lake Washington Students Are National Merit Semifinalists

REDMOND, WA — Five dozen high school seniors studying at five Lake Washington schools this week were named semifinalists for the 68th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The annual scholarship funds more than 7,000 scholarships each year valued together at nearly $28 million.

The Lake Washington School District's 60 semifinalists are part of 16,000 who qualified as semifinalists across the U.S. this year, with 15,000 expected to advance to the final stage. Students were chosen based on their performance in the 2021 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.

With nearly 31,000 students, Lake Washington is the state's second-largest school district and the fastest-growing in King County.

Here is the full list of semifinalists from the Lake Washington School District:

Eastlake High School

• Akshita Amarnath (Sammamish)
• Sreshta Appalabattula (Sammamish)
• Dylan T. Cajigas (Sammamish)
• Elizabeth A. Fein (Sammamish)
• Seohee Jeon (Redmond)
• Tanvi Kale (Sammamish)
• Kelly J. Lin (Sammamish)
• Sean X. Lin (Sammamish)
• Arjun Menon (Redmond)
• Jaysheel S. Pandya (Sammamish)
• Nancy L. Qu (Sammamish)
• Avni Rao (Redmond)
• Ankhita R. Sathanur (Sammamish)
• Noah Shi (Sammamish)
• Vaishnavi Sistla (Sammamish)
• Bianca T. Timofte (Duvall)
• Mahima D. Vadlamani (Sammamish)
• Karan A. Vishwamitran (Sammamish)
• Yan Zhu (Sammamish)

International Community School

• Aubrey S. Jacob (Redmond)
• Ann C. Li (Redmond)
• Santoshi Pisupati (Redmond)

Juanita High School

• Nam H. Dao (Kirkland)
• Anat Dubinsky (Woodinville)
• Aidan Y. Liu (Kirkland)
• Qing Yang Sun (Kirkland)

Redmond High School

• Colin Cai (Redmond)
• Castor Chen (Redmond)
• Ishan Goel (Redmond)
• Joseph D. Kaim (Redmond)
• Sreshta I. Kalisi (Redmond)
• Akshita Kikkuru (Redmond)
• Felix Ulysses Niko Knowlton (Redmond)
• Keerthana Kurapati (Redmond)
• Sriram S. Kutty (Redmond)
• Lora Kwon (Redmond)
• Jason C. Lev (Redmond)
• Griffin W. Maes (Redmond)
• Isha Mehta (Redmond)
• Mukta Mishra (Redmond)
• Tony Wu (Redmond)
• Cady Xia (Redmond)
• Toprak B. Yildirim (Redmond)
• Allen Zheng (Redmond)

Nikola Tesla STEM High School

• Keshav Acharya (Sammamish)
• Samiullah Khan Badal Khan (Redmond)
• Druhin Bhowal (Sammamish)
• Steven S. He (Redmond)
• Min-Xuan Jyi (Kirkland)
• Thanushree Karunagaran (Redmond)
• Evan E. Kim (Redmond)
• Harish Krishnakumar (Redmond)
• Sebastian N. Kumar (Sammamish)
• Hitesh Mantha (Sammamish)
• Shreya Pandey (Redmond)
• Siddhant Porwal (Redmond)
• Gauri Raman (Sammamish)
• Arihant K. Singh (Sammamish)
• Anjali M. Sreenivas (Sammamish)
• Anya Vaish (Kirkland)