38 seniors named as National Merit scholars

Thirty-eight students were notified by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) on Sept. 2 that they were among the top 1 percent of all scorers on the PSAT, the guidance department said.

To qualify for the National Merit honor, students must take the PSAT in their junior year. Of the 1.5 million students who take the test, approximately 50,000 high scorers qualify for program recognition. Those students are then either recognized as commended students or national semifinalists.

Of these commended students, roughly 16,000 receive the honor of being semifinalists. In February, the top 15,000 semifinalists are recognized as finalists and scholarships are awarded based on letters of recommendation, and extra-curricular activities and a final essay.

With nearly 12 percent of its senior class qualifying as semifinalists, Saratoga High owns the third highest such rate among public schools in California, after Mission San Jose and Lynbrook.

“I really didn’t study for the PSAT, just preparing for the SAT gets you prepared for the PSATs,” said senior Elaine Chou, one of the semifinalists.

Chou will find out whether or not she is a finalist this coming February. She actually had no intention of being the semifinalist and she said that she was actually surprised by the honor of qualifying for the NMSC.

Of all the finalists, 8,300 students receive one of three scholarships: the National Merit $2,500 Scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships and college sponsored scholarships.

Semifinalists include seniors Gautam Bhayani, Penelope Burgess, Desmond Chan, Michael Chang, Sofia Chang, Sanjana Chetia, Alex Chiang, Chou, Will Edman, David Eng, Anoop Galivanche, Cecilia Hollenhorst, Peter Hsieh, Daniel Hsu, Justine Huang, Chris Jones, Sophie Kang, Isabel McPherson, Ailene Nguyen, Kelsey Owyang, Viraj Parmar, Hansen Qian, Manish Raghavan, Kushal Raj, Krishnan Raman, Varsha Ramesh, Antara Rao, Meghana Rao, Parul Singh, Anshu Siripurapu, Victor Sutardja, Christine Tseng, Paras Unadkat, Jason Wu, Jennifer Yang, Alissa Zhang, Anna Zhang and Myron Zhang.