Fifty-five seniors from seven Houston Independent School District high schools have qualified as finalists in the 61st annual National Merit Scholarship Program and will now vie for more than $32 million in college scholarships.
The students are among about 15,000 from across the country to advance to the finalist level, allowing them the opportunity to continue in the academic competition.
They attend Bellaire, Carnegie Vanguard, Lamar and Lee high schools, DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Eastwood Academy, and the High School for the Performing & Visual Arts.
The National Merit Scholarship Program provides college scholarships to academically talented U.S. high school students who score well on the Preliminary SAT. Scholarships are provided to students from each state who have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for college success.
Roughly 1.5 million high school juniors from across the country took the 2014 PSAT, which serves as the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Less than 1 percent — or 16,000 students —were named semifinalists, which included 64 HISD students. Only about 7,400 students will receive scholarships, which will be awarded beginning later this month and through July.
HISD’s 2015-2016 National Merit Scholarship finalists are:
Bellaire High School
Tomas Arango
Dinah A. Baum
Jackson Chang
Yujie Chen
Alan W. Dai
Teresa J. Datta
Elijah M. Defferari
Amy Fan
James Fang
Yijun Hu
Chijindu M. Iheanacho
Lauren Li
Zilu Li
Jinjie Ling
Amber E. Liu
Edward M. Ni
Samhith Punukula
Grant T. Su
Christina Tan
Tiara P. Tanugraha
Suneal Vemuri
Jennifer Wang
Liana Wang
Benjamin E. Williams
Antony N. Yun
Carnegie Vanguard High School
Madeline E. Davet
Elizabeth O. Hartzell
Jonah R. Levine
Patrick A. Revilla
Annum Sadana
Nathanial K. Sandweiss
Victoria L. Songyang
DeBakey High School for Health Professions
Akshaya V. Annapragada
Siddharth C. Gorantla
Nishaa Iqbal
Thao T. Lam
Ashley C. Meremikwu
Adrian Moga
Charles B. Neal
Swanand M. Rakhade
Sasha Raman
Kasra Sadeghi
Sachindra N. Sanam Venkata
Jason I. Thomas
Rohan S. Valleru
Brandon L. Wu
Asli Yilmaz
Gary Zhang
Eastwood Academy
Sana Shaikh
High School for the Performing & Visual Arts
David C. Alexander
Regina M. Cook
Kate A. Ham
Lamar High School
Philip Tan
John E. Vick
Lee High School
Oscar Wu