157 MCPS Students Named National Merit Semifinalists

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the semifinalists in the 2021 competition Wednesday, Sept. 9. 157 Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS) students are National Merit semifinalists. The semifinalists will now go on to compete nationally for scholarships that will be awarded in the spring.

The schools with the most finalists are Montgomery Blair (39), Richard Montgomery (28), Poolesville (20), Thomas S. Wootton (19), and Winston Churchill (16).

The MCPS semifinalists come from 15 high schools, including Bethesda-Chevy Chase, Montgomery Blair, Winston Churchill, Clarksburg, Col. Zadok Magruder, Northwest, Paint Branch, Poolesville, Richard Montgomery, Rockville, Seneca Valley, Walter Johnson, Wheaton, Walt Whitman, and Thomas S. Wootton.

The semifinalists are:

Bethesda-Chevy Chase

• Claire A. Edmonds
• Eleanor M. Fairbanks
• Sofia G. Fontana
• Maya L. Kessner
• Frances D. Rosen
• Hailey Z. Sobel
• Sarah S. Sparling
• John V. Stocker
• Teagen E. Tsui-Rosen

Montgomery Blair

• Aviva R. Bechky
• Ezra M. Bernstein
• Shoshana Braier
• Oscar M. Brodkin
• Ethan S. Coffin
• Noah B. Elazar
• Anna L. Fisher Lopez
• Nicole G. Frank
• Daniel Y. Ge
• Fiona D. Harrington
• Arthur A. Hu
• Bumjin Joo
• Ozan K. Kayaalp
• Dheeraj U. Keshav
• Mark G. Kokiyelov
• Jason E. Liu
• Raymond Luo
• Daniel G. Monroe
• Rajit Mukhopadhyay
• Ethan J. Oh
• Eli S. Qian
• Timothy C. Qian
• Caroline A. Robison
• Svetlana Y. Semenova
• Ishaan A. Shrestha
• Nora E. Slott
• Esther Tang
• Christopher L. Tong
• Nicole E. Tran
• Shariar Vaez-Ghaemi
• Marc S. Wagger
• Charlotte S. Wallsten
• Evan Z. Wang
• Bracklinn N. Williams
• Colin W. Wu
• Gabriel D. Wu
• Chad K. Yu
• Joseph A. Zenick
• Lillian Zhou

Winston Churchill

• Emily Cao
• Michael C. Chu
• Vivian Dong
• Julie Y. Fan
• Seung Hyun Jeong
• Andy Q. Jiang
• Brian Q. Ju
• Daniel G. Liu
• Jeffrey J. Luo
• Tsach C. Mackey
• Al Nie
• Noah P. Schiff
• Emily A. Tong
• Nathan Varner
• Madeline G. Vinal
• Evan K. Xu

Clarksburg

• Divahar Sivanesan

Col. Zadok Magruder

• Benjamin T. Kwiatkowski

Northwest

• Felix Gu

Paint Branch

• Mary E. Shawhan

Poolesville

• Robert S. Bao
• Smrithi S. Chakravarthyy
• Alexander Chen
• Kandasamy K. Chokkalingam
• Aidan R. Goettsch
• Joshua Hou
• Cole P. Johnson
• Jane Liu
• Jason Liu
• Srisrujan Penikelapati
• Angelina C. Sachar
• Ronoy Sarkar
• Shreyas R. Soma
• Christopher E. Stallard
• Sonia V. Stan
• Sabrina I. Su
• Nathan Tang
• Jonathan X. Ye
• Gene G. Yu
• Ian Yu

Richard Montgomery

• Daniel Chen
• Timothy J. Chu
• Jaewoo Chung
• Fang Du
• Helen Gu
• Corrine B. Hanway
• Jason Hu
• Kevin Z. Huang
• Joseph G. Jasperse
• Alexander Karbowski
• Jade D. LeSchack
• Kyle Liao
• Sara R. Logsdon
• Naomi K. Louie
• Chris H. Ma
• Mary Z. Ma
• Sabrina J. Mei
• Annika J. Meng
• Sarah Molot
• Namya Nanda
• Justin L. Posner
• Jerry Shen
• Lucy Shen
• Danesh Sivakumar
• Michael B. Sun
• Grace J. Tang
• Amy Zhai
• Eileen T. Zhang

Rockville

• Lucas M. Franke
• Jaxon D Lee

Seneca Valley

• Ketki A. Shah

Walter Johnson

• Evan L. Calhoun
• Ella M. Gaul
• Beri S. Gershwind
• Linnea C. Hultman
• Sachin V. Kammula
• Moinak Nath

Wheaton

• Rebecca J. Baxter
• Tsegazeab N. Beteselassie
• Yeabsira R. Moges
• Alexander C. Rhoman

Walt Whitman

• Rhea Bhattacharjee
• Marc A. Blitz
• Kaya Ginsky
• Emily M. London
• Susan B. Rodgers
• Rachel E. Scissors
• Jacob M. Spector
• Benjamin M. Waldman
• Kushan S. Weerakoon

Thomas S. Wootton

• Michael J. Chen
• Andrei I. Davydov
• Annie L. Dong
• Amy X. He
• Ellie K. Helgeson
• Emma E. Helgeson
• Daniel S. Hwang
• Catherine S. LeDoux
• Bojun Li
• Grace L. Li
• Jennifer J. Li
• Nastaran Moghimi
• Pranav Ramesh
• Ethan W. Sawyer
• Jenna M. Shi
• Jessica Y. Shi
• Katherine J. Sohn
• Aidan B. Wilbur
• James J. Zou

Semifinalists from MCPS were selected from among high school juniors who were top scorers on the 2019 PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. Approximately 15,000 semifinalists across the nation will be considered for advancement to the finalist stage of the competition.

Finalists will be considered for $2,500 National Merit scholarships, plus additional corporate-sponsored and college/university-sponsored scholarships.

Visit National Merit Scholarship Program to learn more about the program.