Pictured are 12 of Oregon's 28 talented high school seniors who won a prestigious $2,500 National Merit Scholarship.Courtesy of the National Merit Scholars
Twenty-eight Oregon seniors have won one of the most prestigious academic awards for high schoolers, the $2,500 National Merit Scholarship.
Nearly all of the winners are heading to college with plans to study science, technology, engineering or math.
Only four of Oregon’s 2025 scholars come from outside the Portland metro area, with two hailing from Bend, one from Klamath Falls and one from Corvallis. Half of the winners are enrolled in Beaverton School District, with Sunset and Westview high schools dominating the competition at six scholars each.
The winners of the highly competitive $2,500 scholarship are judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success of all National Merit Scholars, according to the scholarship organization. A committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors select the winners based on their standardized test scores, school and community leadership, grades, class difficulty, an essay and a recommendation letter.
Here are this year’s winning students, listed alphabetically by high school:
William Mowry of Bend High SchoolPhoto by Wasim Muklashy
William L. Mowry
William L. Mowry is headed to Massachusetts to study at Williams College, where he will compete on the school’s Division I Nordic ski team. He is a two-time Oregon statewide Nordic skiing champion and has raced competitively around the country. Mowry said he is looking forward to a strong liberal arts education at Williams and is considering pursuing a career in medicine. While in high school, he was on the board of his school’s environmental club and a regional leader for the Eugene-based nonprofit Our Future, which advocates for climate justice education to be integrated into K-12 schools around the state.
Sanika Patterson of Bend High SchoolCourtesy of Sanika Patterson
Sanika Patterson
Sanika Patterson will be matriculating at Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif., in the fall and says she plans to major in engineering, physics, or computer science. She’s also hoping to have time to take classes in political science and economics at Harvey Mudd and the other colleges in the immediate vicinity. An active member of her high school’s robotics team, she said she is also very proud to have passed the Oregon Music Teachers Association piano syllabus level X this spring, a goal she’s been working towards since age 9. Patterson will also be competing in the National Speech and Debate Association’s national tournament later this summer.
Tyler George of Catlin GabelCourtesy of Tyler George
Tyler Toren George
Tyler Toren George, the student body president at his Portland-area private school, will be a Jefferson Scholar at the University of Virginia next fall. He served in student government almost his entire middle and high school career and said he was proud to have spearheaded the return of the school’s jog-a-thon to raise money for financial aid, among other areas. For his final senior project, he is drafting a phone and technology policy aimed at helping his school better support student life, wellbeing and learning. George is also a mock trial veteran who captained Catlin’s team for two years and the captain of the track team, where he competes in pole vaulting. In Virginia, he is interested in studying government and said he is curious about careers in politics and law.
Sana Shah of Catlin GabelCourtesy of Sana Shah
Sana Revati Shah
Sana Revati Shah is headed to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she plans to major in molecular biology and computer science. During high school, she worked with the National Institutes of Health’s All of Us dataset to research disparities in mental health during the pandemic, and she presented her findings at a convention for the institute’s researchers. At Oregon Health & Science University, she helped to implement an augmented reality solution to improve ergonomics for interventional radiologists, which led to her first peer-reviewed publication. She has also collaborated with the University of Pennsylvania’s Perelman School of Medicine to predict breast cancer risk accurately across diverse datasets. As a board adviser of the Girls STEAM Institute, she taught entrepreneurship to girls around the world. She has also interned at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she developed an open-source tool for the widely used Genome Analysis Toolkit software package. She is also the department manager and co-president of her school’s robotics team, The Flaming Chickens.
Yeats Becker-Blease of Crescent Valley High SchoolCourtesy of Yeats Becker-Blease
Yeats Becker-Blease
Yeats Becker-Blease has been accepted into the honors program at Georgia Tech in Atlanta and plans to study chemical and biomolecular engineering. While in high school, Becker-Blease tutored seven Advanced Placement chemistry students — all of whom got either perfect or near-perfect scores on their AP exams, qualifying them for college credit — and founded a peer tutoring group. Becker-Blease was also a four-year member of Crescent Valley’s Key Club, the president of the school’s National Honor Society chapter and a passionate community volunteer who has worked on food drives, campus clean-ups and other events.
Lucas Smith of Henley High SchoolCourtesy of Lucas Smith
Lucas Smith
Lucas Smith will attend the University of Idaho, where he plans to study wildlife biology. His goal is to work as a biologist and pilot for the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, and he is already well on his way, having already earned his private pilot’s license. When he was not flight training, Smith was busy earning the rank of Eagle Scout and balancing a host of other extracurriculars, including DECA, an entrepreneurship club, and volunteering, along with spending time enjoying the outdoors with friends. At the University of Idaho, he plans to study wildlife sciences and earn an undergraduate certification in geographic information systems and/or remote sensing, in addition to continuing with flight training.
Jacob Van of Beaverton International School is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Jacob Van
Jacob Van
Jacob Van will stay in the Pacific Northwest to attend Oregon State University’s Honors College and study biology on the pre-medicine track. Van’s most meaningful high school accomplishment was founding his nonprofit, the Dimple Care Foundation, he said. Van said his foundation has been able to support Aloha High School students experiencing housing instability by paying their rent, electricity and grocery bills. He has also worked with other underprivileged youth and veterans, Van said.
Oliver Sturn of Lake Oswego High SchoolCourtesy of Oliver Sturn
Oliver Sturn
Oliver Sturn plans to attend the University of Michigan and will study electrical engineering, because, he said, “I am curious about how the technology we use fundamentally works.” Sturn said the most meaningful accomplishment of his high school career was finishing in second place at fencing nationals in 2022. “This was meaningful because it was the manifestation of all the work that I had put in and demonstrated to me that if I applied myself, I could succeed,” Sturn said.
Richard Deng of Lincoln High SchoolCourtesy of Richard Deng
Richard Deng
Richard Deng will be off to the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, where he hopes to study philosophy, politics and economics. He says that the most meaningful accomplishments of his high school career are not connected to academics or grades. “My most meaningful accomplishment has been the amount of connections I have fostered with new, unique and inspiring individuals,” Deng wrote. “The depth and strength of these relationships have fostered a network of friendship that will forever support me on my journey.”
Coral Platt of Lincoln High SchoolCourtesy of Coral Platt
Coral Platt
Coral Platt is headed to Cornell University and is still deciding what to study, but she said she is interested in government and biochemistry as potential majors. Her most significant high school accomplishments, she said, include being part of a team that won sixth place at the national We the People Constitution competition, which she called “an amazing opportunity to engage in politics and law with a group of like-minded people at my school.” She was also especially proud of winning district-level competitions in choir her junior and senior year and being the editor of the Cardinal Times, Lincoln’s student newspaper, and being a part of both musical and journalism communities at her school.
Lauren Tittel of Oregon Episcopal SchoolOregon Episcopal School
Lauren Tittel
Lauren Tittel will attend Carleton College in Minnesota and said she hopes to study biology and Spanish, with an eye towards going into medicine. At Oregon Episcopal School, she was the captain of the track and cross country teams and broke multiple school records throughout high school. She was recruited to run both cross country and distance track for Carleton. She is also a leader of her high school’s Feminism Club and helped to organize an annual menstrual hygiene product drive for a local women’s shelter. Tittel competed at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair in 2023 and 2024 with projects on equine biology.
Brendan Vasanth of Riverdale High SchoolBrandon Vasanth
Brendan Vasanth
Brendan Vasanth will major in finance at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business and said his goal is a career in finance, banking or a related field. He is the valedictorian of his high school, co-founded its investment club and interned last summer with Jensen Investment Management, an asset management firm. Vasanth is also a three-season varsity athlete, competing in soccer, basketball and track. Born with hearing loss, he said he has made it his mission to help others who have that condition, by promoting newborn hearing screenings for early intervention and being a resource for parents whose own children have experienced hearing loss.
Kathryn Brady of St. Mary's AcademyEmily Noelle Photo
Kathryn Marie Brady
Kathryn Marie Brady plans to attend Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service in Washington D.C., where she intends to major in international politics and earn a double minor in economics and mathematics. Brady said she plans to go to law school and eventually work in national security. She was the starting goalkeeper for St. Mary’s varsity soccer team and earned all-league honors in both soccer and tennis. Brady was a co-captain and quarterback for the first flag football team at St. Mary’s Academy. She learned to play hockey during her junior year in high school and plans to play club hockey in college. The leadership skills she learned in sports served her well, she said, and helped her win one of two state party chair positions at Oregon Girls’ State, a weeklong civics education program.
Hrithik Ketineni of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Hrithik Ketineni
Hrithik Ketineni
Hrithik Ketineni will attend Stanford University. He plans to study computer engineering and artificial intelligence because he’s “fascinated by how computers work at every level and by our ability to build intelligent systems that expand human potential,” he said. As a high school student, Ketineni was named a finalist in the Regeneron Science Talent Search after designing a quantum search algorithm. At the same time, he founded a club at Westview to mentor his peers in conducting original scientific research.
Sai Harshith Kodali of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Sai Harshith Kodali
Sai Harshith Kodali
Sai Harshith Kodali is headed to Texas, where he will attend Rice University and major in biosciences on a pre-medicine track. He is considering a focus on cell biology or neuroscience, Kodali said, with interest “in the intersection of both areas, specifically in the relationship between genetics and neurological disease.” Conducting genetics research at Oregon Health & Science University’s National Primate Research Center was his most meaningful high school accomplishment, he said. At OHSU, Kodali discovered novel genetic variants in a type of monkey, presented at two research symposiums and won the animal sciences category at the Northwest Science Expo. Kodali is also a member of Westview’s Health Occupations Students of America club and has placed as an international top 10 finalist twice in HOSA Bowl, a quiz bowl competition which tests student knowledge on health care and HOSA. When he isn’t preparing for a future in medicine or researching primates, he plays guitar, he said.
Saisaharsh Reddy Kolli of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Saisaharsh Reddy Kolli
Saisaharsh Reddy Kolli
Saisaharsh Reddy Kolli will attend Case Western Reserve University as a part of its pre-professional scholars for medicine program. With plans to major in neuroscience or biology, Kolli is interested in “testing viable blood substitutes and researching cancer,” he said. As a high schooler, he worked with the Red Cross, hosting blood drives at Westview and serving on their State Youth Council. He was involved in his school’s club for future health care professionals, where he became an international HOSA Bowl finalist. Kolli also spent time in psychoneuroimmunology labs at the Portland VA Medical Center and OHSU.
Rishab Madhusudhan of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Rishab Madhusudhan
Rishab Madhusudhan
Rishab Madhusudhan will attend University of Texas at Austin and plans to study electrical and computer engineering. The most meaningful accomplishment of his high school career was being on a First Tech Challenge robotics team, he said, where he helped develop the robot’s software. The team “was especially meaningful because I was able to develop my engineering and leadership skills in a fun environment,” he said.
Nilani Maheswaran of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Nilani Maheswaran
Nilani Maheswaran
Nilani Maheswaran will attend the University of Pennsylvania. She plans to double major in economics and computer science, because she’s interested “in exploring how technology and economic systems can be used to inform development and policy,” she said. During her time at Westview, Maheswaran’s most meaningful accomplishment was helping create House Bill 3012 this year, which would have allowed 16- and 17-year olds to vote in school board elections. She said that this “experience taught me the power of advocacy and the youth voice.” As part of this work, she also started Vote16Oregon, a group which advocates for a lowered voting age.
Ethan Zhang of Westview High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Ethan Zhang
Ethan Zhang
Ethan Zhang will study computer science as a Turing Scholar at the University of Texas at Austin this fall. In 2020, Zhang founded Youth Cyber Defender, an organization that promotes cyber security education among K-12 students and provides assistance to local businesses. For his work on Youth Cyber Defender, Zhang won the Prudential Emerging Visionaries award, which he said “represented the culmination of my efforts to help secure the small businesses and their thousands of users in the local community,” When he isn’t working on cyber security, Zhang enjoys math, chess and tennis.
Shreyan Paliwal of FLEX Online School is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Shreyan Paliwal
Shreyan Paliwal
Shreyan Paliwal has been accepted to the University of Texas at Austin, where he plans to study computer science in the Turing Scholars honors program and math. Paliwal was a frequent participant in math competitions growing up, including qualifying for the USA Junior Mathematical Olympiad. The interactions he had with older students at those competitions inspired him to start the Oregon Math Circle, a statewide club for high schoolers interested in math. He said he founded the club because he “wanted to provide a more engaged community which could touch younger students’ lives without them having to individually seek those older students out.”
Wafiya Hasan of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Wafiya Hasan
Wafiya Hasan
Wafiya Hasan plans to study at the University of Oregon Honors College. At Sunset, Hasan’s biggest accomplishment was her growth as an artist, she said. Through art classes, her understanding of artistic expression and representation has deepened. She hopes to continue to bring art into her studies at UO, where she plans to study advertising. “I love design and I want to integrate it into my higher education, but I also want to explore new fields in business and tech, so advertising strikes a nice balance,” she said.
Akash Pai of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Akash Pai
Akash Ashish Pai
Akash Pai will attend Stanford University with plans to study biomechanical engineering. “The application of physical engineering to physiological problems excites me for its hands-on, tangible approach,” he said. As a high schooler, he conducted medical devices research at Harvard Medical School. He hopes to “have a direct impact on society” through his work in the future, Pai said.
Ashank Shaw of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Ashank Shah
Ashank Shah
Ashank Shah will study computer science at California Institute of Technology, with plans to focus on artificial intelligence and machine learning. In high school, Shah conducted computer science and biology research at Dartmouth College and Purdue University, winning third place for his work at the International Science and Engineering Fair. Shah also co-founded the California-based nonprofit Computer Science Youth of America, which aims to make computer science education more accessible. Through the nonprofit, Shah raised more than a quarter of a million dollars in computer science scholarships, grants and donations.
Kaitlyn Randolph of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Kaitlyn Randolph
Kaitlyn Randolph
Kaitlyn Randolph will attend the Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University to study international politics, with hopes of going into law or diplomacy. She plans to focus her studies on international security, learning about how armed conflict, environmental disasters and other issues impact how countries interact. At Sunset, she was very involved in the debate team, qualifying for the 2025 National Tournament of Champions, as well as coaching underclassmen and middle schoolers. In the summers, she traveled to Taiwan, where she worked as the head director for a camp, teaching English and cross-cultural lessons. Randolph found that teaching younger students both at camp and on the debate team was the meaningful part of her high school experience.
Helen Wang of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Helen Wang
Helen Wang
Helen Wang will head to Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her study plans include mechanical engineering and finance, allowing her to “explore the intersection of robotics and business and design accessible, human-centered robots that serve the needs of our diverse communities,” she said. Robotics formed the backbone of Wang’s time at Sunset. She was the captain and build lead of her team, which would win the Motivate Award at the FIRST Championship, an international robotics competition.
Sophia You of Sunset High is one of Oregon's 2025 National Merit Scholars.Courtesy of Sophia You
Sophia You
Sophia You will attend Princeton University, where she will major in electrical and computer engineering and minor in visual arts. She hopes that her studies will prepare her for a career in which she can “combine art and STEM for more effective science communication,” she said. As a high schooler, You was an avid volunteer with the Cedar Mill Library and the Washington County Cooperative Library Services. As an artist, she designed badges, pins and brochures for reading campaigns, made coloring pages for the library’s early literacy campaign and created decorations for community events.
Lauren Gault of West Linn High SchoolHaley Graham
Lauren Gault
Lauren Gault will attend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, majoring in mechanical engineering, after spending four years as an integral part of West Linn High School’s robotics team, which has twice qualified for the FIRST Robotics Competition world championships in the last four years. Gault and other robotics team members have hosted and taught at STEM camps for more than 250 students. Gault won third place in the physics and astronomy category at the Northwest Science Expo for research into trapped-ion quantum computing. When not busy with robotics and research, Gault is a community volunteer who won a grant to assemble and distribute 120 winter warming kits to unhoused community members and has earned a third degree black belt in Taekwondo.
Annamika Konkola of West Linn High School.Courtesy of Annamika Konkola
Annamika Konkola
Annamika Konkola will attend Rice University in Texas and said she hopes to study cognitive science or social policy analysis. Her eventual goal is to become a veterinarian to “contribute to global health through science and policy,” she said. She has twice attended the International Science and Engineering Fair, presenting research focused on educational equity and behavioral science, served as her high school’s key club president and has co-chaired the city of West Linn’s Youth Advisory Council for the past three years. Konkola was one of Oregon’s delegates to the United States Senate Youth Program this spring.
— Eddy Binford-Ross covers education and local politics for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at ebinfordross@oregonian.com
— Julia Silverman covers K-12 education for The Oregonian/OregonLive. Reach her via email at jsilverman@oregonian.com
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