7 More San Ramon National Merit Scholars Announced

SAN RAMON, CA — The next group of 2021 National Merit Scholarship winners include seven high school students from San Ramon.

They are among the more than 3,100 announced nationally this year to receive between $500 and $2,000 scholarships from colleges and universities across the country, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. said in a news release Wednesday. Two rounds of winners have previously been announced.

Just-announced National Merit Scholarship winners from San Ramon include:

• Aniket Chatterjee of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study computer science at Arizona State University
• Sriram Ganesan of California High School; intends to study business at Boston University
• Arjun Garg of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study math at the University of Chicago
• Anish Lahorani of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study sports medicine at the University of Southern California
• Vedasamhitha Padisetti of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study biomedicine at the University of Southern California
• Salika Vummarao of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study medicine at the University of Central Florida
• Claire Z. Zhang of Dougherty Valley High School; intends to study economics at the University of Chicago

The National Merit winners announced this week will have their scholarships funded by the colleges and universities that they will attend. One hundred and sixty colleges and universities — including 85 private and 75 public schools — took part in the merit scholarship program in 2021.

An additional group of college-sponsored National Merit scholars will be announced in July, the scholarship corporation said. This group is part of the approximately 7,500 National Merit scholarship winners who will be selected by the end of 2021. National Merit scholarships via corporate-sponsored awards and the corporation’s own $2,500 scholarships were announced earlier in the spring.

More than 1.5 million juniors nationally entered the 2021 National Merit scholarship program when they took the 2019 preliminary SAT/National Merit scholarship qualifying test, the corporation said. About 17,000 semifinalists, fewer than 1 percent of the country’s high school seniors, were announced last fall.

Semifinalists had to write an essay and detail their extracurricular activities, awards and leadership positions to become a finalist. About half of the 16,000 finalists will be merit scholars by the end of the year, the corporation said.