The following students at East Cobb high schools were among the more than 16,000 nationwide named semifinalists for the 2020 class of National Merit Scholarships this week.
They will continue competing for an estimated $31 million in total scholarship money that will be awarded in the spring of 2020. Here are the students, with more details at the end about the National Merit program:
- Lassiter: Eleanor Froula; Claire Halloran; Joseph Kramer; Gabrielle Levitt; Anna Mitchell; Catherine Pereira; Paul Tegethoff;
- Pope: Ada Burris, Sanjeet Harry, Andrew Myers, Yelizaveta Pivnik;
- Sprayberry: Reilly S. Misra;
- Walton: Chanwoo Bae, Jordan Bass, Alec Berger, Andrew Cameron, Daniel Catanese, Anjali Chareddy, Taylor Chiles, Sinead de Cleir, Judith Denning, Julia Dierker, Russell Emerine, Reagan Jacobson, Guy Kemelmakher, Aleem Lakdawala, Andrew Li, Viviana Lu, Nidhi Manikkoth, Kara McKinley, Rushil More, Russell Newton, Erik Pitts, Neeraj Raja, Anant Rajan, Pranav Rajbhandari, Aaron Rieck, Arvind Saligrama, Tara Shabazaz, Eric Simon, Bill Sun, Shiloh Thomas-Wilkinson, Qilin Tong, Ria Uppalapati, Akshin Vemana, Tharun Venkatesan, Madeline Zhang, Zaim Zibran;
- Wheeler: Ann-Marie Abunyewa, Kruthik Alapati, Ava Autera, Charlie Bishop, Patrick Chen, Alessa Cullinan, Rose Jewel, Brian Kent, Emma Mason, Pranav Nedumpurath, Jeremy Payne, Morris Wan, Eric Yao.
Candidates are assessed based on their academic records, as well as participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards received. According to the National Merit fact sheet:
“A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school offi cial, write an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.”
About 15,000 students are expected to advance to the finalist level, and will be notified in February. From that group the scholarship winners will be chosen.
Corporations, organizations in local communities and collages offer individual types of scholarships under the National Merit program, and there are state-representational scholarships as well.
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