Los Gatos and Saratoga High Schools honored their latest National Merit Scholarship semifinalists this fall after the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists were publicly announced as part of the 70th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.
The Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District has 41 students who qualified for this prestigious honor.
These students now have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million, which will be offered next spring.
Los Gatos (LGHS) and Saratoga (SHS) High School seniors entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) as juniors last school year, along with over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools throughout the country.
This test served as an initial screening of program entrants. The qualifying semifinalists represent less than one percent of US high school seniors in the state.
For LGSUHSD, these students represent 5.1 percent of the graduating seniors.
Here are the local 2024 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists:
Katherine Berger (SHS)
Akshat Bora (SHS)
Rebecca Bossow (SHS)
Aiden M. Chen (SHS)
Richard Chung (SHS)
Leo Dai (LGHS)
Arshia Desarkar (SHS)
Kyle Eldridge (LGHS)
Hayden Fu (SHS)
Kirby Fung (SHS)
Kevin Gan (LGHS)
Sarah Gechlik (SHS)
Leonardo Jia (SHS)
Rohan Jones (LGHS)
Nicole Lee (SHS)
Timothy Leung (SHS)
Sydney Li (SHS)
Grace Liu (SHS)
Alan Lu (SHS)
Thien Mai (LGHS)
Skyler Mao (SHS)
Jack Mei (LGHS)
Aryeh Ohriner (LGHS)
Ruhan Periyacheri (SHS)
Tatum Pyle (LGHS)
Saira Ramakrishnan (SHS)
Tarun Ramakrishnan (SHS)
Rosa Sahandi (LGHS)
Daniel Schwartz (SHS)
Tanav Shankar (LGHS)
Ria Sharma (LGHS)
Tanuj K. Siripurapu (SHS)
Angela Tan (SHS)
Alexander Vash-Munoz (SHS)
Andrae Wan (SHS)
Brandon Wang (SHS)
Timothy Wei (SHS)
Sora A. Wongsonegoro (SHS)
Luke Zhang (SHS)
Julius Zhou (SHS)
Jeremy Zhou (SHS)
“It’s truly incredible how many of our students have achieved this national honor,” shared Acting Superintendent Heath Rocha. “This is such a testament to their dedication, hard work, and commitment to their academic success. I congratulate each student and am so grateful for the support and leadership of our educators and families in inspiring and nurturing this accomplishment.”
Semifinalists have the opportunity to advance to the Finalist level by submitting a detailed scholarship application, in which they provide information about the semifinalist’s academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards received.
A semifinalist must have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, write an essay, earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test, and be endorsed and recommended by a high school teacher or administrator.
To learn more about the National Merit Scholarship program and process, visit www.nationalmerit.org.
