Dozens of Cupertino high school seniors are among about 16,000 high school students in the graduating class of 2027 — less than 1% of U.S. seniors — named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
The semifinalists, announced on Sept. 9, qualified based on their scores on the Preliminary SAT. About 95 percent are expected to attain finalist standing on the strength of an application detailing academic performance, participation in activities, employment and leadership.
About half the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, to be announced in the spring.
The Cupertino High School semifinalists are Ayush Bansal, Avyukt R. Bharadwaj, Laura J. Chen, Sanvi V. Desai, Ella J. He, Soyoung Jee, Anuraag N. Kabe, Vedangh S. Kamath, Prisha Kaushik, Ishan Khosla, Rosa S. Lee, Qinzhao Li, Stephen Y. Lin,Mingxin Liu, Harish Loghashankar, Eunho Namkoong, Nilesh Parasar, Sharvil N. Phadke, Aneesh Raghavan, Niranjan S. Rao, Izumi R. Rubin, Arnav R. Sabbella, Max Y. Shi , Aditya Singla, Hyeyeon Song, Connor F. Wang, Justin C. Wong, Anthony N. Xavier, Eric Yan, Kayce Yan and Celine Zhang.
The Homestead High School semifinalists are Yana H. Astardjieva, Naveen L. Badrinath, Sachin N. Chandran, Rachel R. Chen, Naomi L. Chi, Allison C. Chuang, Spencer K. Diep, Hayden I. Floyd, Sunnie D. Gao, Advait Ghosh, Siddhartha S. Gokhale, Benjamin B. Hansen, Jason G. Ip, Sufee N. Kathane, Charles Y. Komatsu, Alexander Lau, Jonah A. Lin, Elliot Y. Lu, Alessandro Montesi, Anushree A. Ogale, Varun Rajkumar, Anoushka P. Rathi, Sree Vemuri, Claire Xu, Ethan D. Xue, Cailin Yeh and Stanley Z. Yen.
The Monta Vista High School semifinalists are Rehan Babu, Jonah H.Chang, Aeshna Chatterji, Sophia Chen, Joyce R. Chou, Atharv S. Dirisala, Soham Dwivedi, Chloe Y. He, Chenghao Hu, Danica Huang, Xinhui Huang, Nimal Kumar, Harvey Lei, Erin Liu, Harly L. Liu, William K. Liu, Naomi P. Lyn, Elaina Y. Pan, Vibha Raghvendran, Shreyas R. Rajalingari, Ananya K. Rao, Rishabh R. Rathi, Simha S. Satoor, Yashasvi Sehgal, Leo M. Shih, Sridhar Shivashankar, Jihoo Won, Yuan Xing, Audrey E. Yin and Kaiyu Zhang