Chantilly Students Win 2020 National Merit Scholarships

CHANTILLY, VA — Five students from Chantilly, including two who attend Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, won National Merit Scholarships, the National Merit Scholarship Corp. announced Wednesday.

The five Chantilly area students were among 2,500 Merit Scholar designees chosen from a pool of more than 15,000 finalists in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program.

The National Merit $2500 Scholarship winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills, and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The number of winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.

The five National Merit Scholarship winners from the Chantilly area:

• Gayatri Chintala, Chantilly, Chantilly High School, National Merit $2,500 Scholarship. Probable career field: Political science.
• Yifan Chen, Fairfax, Chantilly High School, National Merit $2,500 Scholarship. Probable career field: International development.
• Rishabh Misra, Chantilly, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, National Merit $2,500 Scholarship. Probable career field: Computer science.
• Jialin Tso, Chantilly, Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, National Merit $2,500 Scholarship. Probable career field: Computer science.
• Eshaan S. Rawat, Chantilly, Freedom High School, National Merit $2,500 Scholarship. Probable career field: Medicine.

This year’s National Merit Scholarship Program began in October 2018 when more than 1.5 million juniors at about 21,000 high schools took the PSAT/NMSQT, which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the nation’s high school seniors, were named semifinalists on a state-representational basis. Only these 16,000 Semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition.

By the conclusion of the 2020 program, about 7,600 finalists will have earned the Merit Scholar title and received a total of over $30 million in college scholarships.

The winners are part of the second group of scholarship winners announced in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program. On April 22, more than 1,000 recipients of corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards were named.

On June 3 and July 13, approximately 4,100 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners will be announced. By the conclusion of this year’s competition, about 7,600 academic champions will have won National Merit Scholarships worth more than $30 million.