September 10, 2026 — Cobb County students are once again making their mark on one of the nation's most prestigious academic recognition programs. A total of 54 students from Cobb County Schools have been named semifinalists in the 2027 National Merit Scholarship Program, placing them among a select group of high school seniors recognized for exceptional academic performance.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced this week the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists nationwide. The students represent less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors and will have the opportunity to continue competing for approximately 6,700 National Merit Scholarships worth about $24 million.
For Cobb students, the announcement highlights the breadth of academic achievement across our schools with semifinalists representing Allatoona, Harrison, Kennesaw Mountain, Lassiter, Pope, Walton, and Wheeler High Schools.
Allatoona High School
- Isabelle Siedman
Harrison High School
- Lucas Najarro
- Zachary Pasanen
Kennesaw Mountain High School
- Haeum Kim
- Neeraj Kondragunta
- Austin McLain
- Alexis Thomas
Lassiter High School
- Adwita Aremanda
- Kanav Ganguly
- Luka Mazukna
- Xavier Menard
- Tristin Veras
Pope High School
- Sarah Blackwell
- John Law
Walton High School
- Meredith Bates
- Julian Baumann
- Pranavi Borra
- Blake Cappallo
- Aaron Chen
- Gavin Croom
- Alexandra Ding
- Stella Figueroa
- Noelle Gustason
- Jessica He
- Herbert Nicholas Henry Arockiaraj
- Neil Kapoor
- Jack Landrum
- Ria Mohanty
- Maya Muthu
- Minh Nguyen
- Saarth Pandya
- William Pei
- Shreya Prakash
- Julian Ritter
- Aaruhya Tummala
- Kashyap Valeti
- Jasper Wolfe-Tham
- Brady Zhou
Wheeler High School
- Caleb Amerault
- Trevor Anderson
- Rafael Aragon
- Nathan W. Deng
- Eason Fang
- Charles Heuser
- Jack Hong
- Vyom Krishna
- Aaron Mok
- Nevaan Nigam
- Shreyan Patel
- Lars Peterson
- Pranav SenthilKumar
- Andrew Squires
- Daniel Stafford
- Falak Upadhyay
Being named a semifinalist is the first major step toward becoming a National Merit Scholar. To advance to Finalist standing, students must complete a detailed scholarship application with their high school official. The application includes information about academic performance, school and community activities, leadership, employment, honors, and awards. Semifinalists must also have an outstanding academic record, receive endorsement from a school official, submit an essay, and earn SAT or ACT scores that confirm their earlier qualifying test performance.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation expects about 95% of semifinalists to advance to the Finalist level. Finalists will be notified in February, and all 2027 National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from that group. The 2027 program began with more than 1.2 million juniors in approximately 20,000 high schools taking the 2025 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
Congratulations to all Cobb students recognized as 2027 National Merit Semifinalists.
