A total of 40 students from Naperville School District 203 and 44 students from Indian Prairie School District 204 have been named semifinalists in the 69th annual National Merit Scholarship Program for 2024.
Entering the National Merit Scholarship Program
Over 1.3 million students from over 21,000 high schools in the United States entered the program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in their junior year.
Around 16,000 of those students were selected for the semifinals by having a high academic record, an endorsement from a high school official, an SAT or ACT score that confirmed the performance of the preliminary test, and completing a written essay.
Local National Merit Scholarship semifinalists
The semifinalists from Naperville School District 203 and Indian Prairie School District 204 are as follows:
DISTRICT 203:
Naperville Central High School – 15 students
- Athena Chen
- Addison Cho
- Celeste Emery
- Vittoria Gallina
- Eric Gu
- Hamza Hasan
- Kynan McCabe-Wild
- Jake Pfeiffer
- Brian Schlesinger
- Deetya Singhal
- Aarit Tewatia
- Jason Xu
- Melody Xu
- Kira Yang
- Harry Yu
Naperville North High School – 25 students
- William Anderson
- Ashwin Balaraman
- Claire Chen
- Dylan Ellis
- Michael P. Fleming
- Luke Golobitsh
- Jason H. Jia
- Aarohan Joshi
- Pramithi Kandalai
- Yikai Liu
- Krish Mellempudi
- Anna-Maria Olarov
- Aaryana Parekh
- Julie Piot
- Trenton Polk
- Deeraj Pothapragada
- Krishna Pothapragada
- Mathew A. Randal
- Matthew Ru
- Bryce Shen
- Dingjia Shen
- Jonathan Wang
- Sarah Wang
- Quade R. Wilson
- Nichole Zhou
DISTRICT 204:
Metea Valley High School – 11 students
- Sri Lakshmi Battula
- Randolph N. Ha
- Gurmeher Kaur
- Hafsah F. Khan
- Somya Mehta
- Harika Nareddy
- Charles A. Nordahl
- Kevin Paul
- Sanskruti S. Sangalge
- Ravi T. Shah
- Kaushik Vemulapalli
Neuqua Valley High School – 24 students
- Arya Adimulam
- Serene R. Bose
- Alex K. Chatterjee
- Nathaniel J. DeSouza
- Mohammad Fazalul Haque
- Akshaya K. Jasti
- Brian Li
- Canchen Li
- Carissa J. Li
- Sophie Y. Lin
- Jai Menon
- Himesh Nasaka
- Aadi Pandit
- Siddharth K. Parmar
- Shivam Purohit
- Adit R. Raha
- Elizabeth S. Rosenberg
- Alyssa Shroff
- Wanhan Sun
- Aditya Sundar
- Rohan Vaish
- Kyle S. Zeng
- April Zhang
- Benjamin Zhao
Waubonsie Valley High School – 9 students
- Parnitha S. Bandla
- Keian Lam
- Jackie Li
- Ethan Ma
- Neha M. Nadgauda
- Eric Prakash
- Maya E. Sanny
- Arnav Shettyo
- Zachary I. Tukker
Continuing toward finalist standing
To become a finalist, the student and a high school official need to submit a scholarship application that includes the student’s academic record, school and community participation, leadership abilities, awards, and employment.
Around 15,000 of the semifinalists will reach finalist standing and will then compete for over 7,000 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $28 million for next spring.
About half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship and earn the Merit Scholar title.
Photo credit: National Merit Scholarship Corporation
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