Poway Unified students named as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists – San Diego Union-Tribune
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There are 55 area high school seniors, including 53 in Poway Unified School District, who are 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists.
Of those attending PUSD campuses, 25 students are at Del Norte High; four at Mt. Carmel High, one at Poway High, six at Rancho Bernardo High and 17 at Westview High.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists in the 71st annual program on Sept. 10. Their inclusion is based on their performance on the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which they took as juniors.
Over 1.3 million juniors in about 20,000 high schools nationwide took the exam, program officials said. The semifinalists represent less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors.
The Poway Unified students named as semifinalists are:
Del Norte High School — Srijan Atti, Jia Bhatnagar, Hayden Chen, Aditya A. Desai, Vidha Yadav Ganji, Advik Garg, Grayson I. Guyot, Maxwell R. Kaas, Chloe F. Kang, Bailey R. Leeder, Hanlun Li, Kyle Liang, Sarah Liu, Rini Nayak, Aashray Reddy, Sean M. Reed, Diem S. Schneider, Akhil Singamneni, Justin T. Smerican, Rahul Verma, Kai Wheeler, Kiana L. Withee, Ian V. Wu, Jenna Xu and Austin T. Zhang.
Mt. Carmel High School — Elijah Brand, Yuvan Gollamudi, Ronak Patel and Zoe Reich.
Poway High School — Tasia A. Campbell.
Rancho Bernardo High School — Simeon S. Kim, William Y. Liu, Akari T. Masham, Lucas M. Rosello, Junseo Ryou and Yuekai Wang.
Westview High School — Kevin M. Chapman, Rashmi Chelliserry, Jayden S. Chu, Hannah H. Dang, Zoey Reese G. Espiritu, Leanne Fan, David Z. He, Lindsay He, Jeffrey X. Huang, Sara Kaushish, Ethan C. Lu, Jaden J. Ma, Pio T. Ryu, Griffin A. Samuel, Michelle Sun, Julian Y. Wu and Melody Y. Zhang.
In addition, two other students from the area were included on the list. Brighton G. Burton, who attends Pacific Coast Academy in Poway, and Alannah Woizeschke, who attends Maranatha Christian Schools in Santa Fe Valley, were named semifinalists.
To be considered as a finalist, the students and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application. This includes their academic record, school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, honors and awards received. The students also need a recommendation from a high school official, to write an essay and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm their earlier test results.
The semifinalists will now compete for the 6,930 National Merit Scholarships announced next spring. Combined, they are worth nearly $26 million. To be considered for a scholarship, the students must advance to the finalist level, which is anticipated for around 95% of the semifinalists, or about 15,000 of them. About half of the finalists will receive a scholarship and Merit Scholar title, officials said.
Next spring, 2,500 National Merit $2,500 scholarships; around 830 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards, and 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be announced. These awards will be announced via four news releases beginning in April and concluding in July.
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