National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist List Released

The list of semi-finalists in the 58th annual National Merit Scholarship Corporation released Wednesday included 25 students from the Mountain View-Los Altos Union School District.

Semi-finalists in the academically prestigious competion will have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $48 million that will be offered next spring.

"These outstanding seniors at Los Altos High School are being recognized this month for their performance on last year’s PSAT," said Maryann Smetzer, LAHS counselor. She added that the students will be formally honored at the Senior Awards Night in May.

Mountain View High School was celebrating and looking forward to the next step.

"MVHS is very proud of this outstanding group of students who have been selected as National Merit Semifinalists this year," said MVHS Counselor Marti McGuirk. "We are excited to support them in the next stages of the process and look forward to celebrating their success in the spring."

Only the top one percent of applicants in the nation receives National Merit finalist recognition, which they enter each year by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The standardized test measures critical reading, math problem-solving and writing skills.

Schools and student names are listed in alphabetical order:

Los Altos High School:

John R. Beutter
Emily  Y. Cheng
Runming Dai
Blaine M. Dzwonczyk
Alice Hau
Catherine Y. Hua
Libbie A. Katsev
Jacqueline Liu
Jerry J. Liu
Hongyi Shi
Richelle L. Smith
Natasha M. Welingkar
Johathan R. Yu, and
Allison D. Yuen

Mountain View High School:

Evan I. Cohen
Jennifer Duan
Christopher J. Egerton
Dina N. Gong
Megan A. Joseph
Nadia L. Khayrallah
Naib A. Mian
Eli Nelson
Lauren Salinero
Janet Uhlir, and
Conan X. Zhou  

Patch will publish names of semi-finalists from Los Altos as they become available. If you know of students who were not recognized from an institution, let us know.