This week, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC®) officials announced the names of more than 16,000 Semifinalists in the 70th annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The Cobb County School District is home to 96 of the academically talented high school seniors, who have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring.
The Cobb students represent the following schools: Campbell High School, Harrison High School, Hillgrove High School, Kennesaw Mountain High School, Lassiter High School, North Cobb High School, Pope High School, Walton High School, and Wheeler High School.
To be considered for a Merit Scholarship award, Semifinalists must fulfill several requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. About 95 percent of the Semifinalists are expected to attain Finalist standing, and approximately half of the Finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship, earning the Merit Scholar title.
NMSC, a not-for-profit organization that operates without government assistance, was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 280 business organizations, higher education institutions, and individual donors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.
Steps in the 2025 Competition:
Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists, representing less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state. The number of semifinalists in a state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the total number of graduating seniors in the nation.
To become a Finalist, the Semifinalist and a high school official must submit 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, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay, and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirm the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test.
From over 16,000 Semifinalists, more than 15,000 are expected to advance to the Finalist level, and in February, they will be notified of this designation. All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from this group of Finalists. Merit Scholar designees are selected based on their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies, without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference.
National Merit Scholarships:
Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2025. Every Finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 770 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 130 corporations and business organizations for Finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located. In addition, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who will attend the sponsor institution.
National Merit Scholarship winners of 2025 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 382,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.
Campbell High School
- Aiden Ekanayake
- Mara Hanlon
- Dhruv Iyer
- Roshni Patel
Harrison High School
- Kaitlyn Chang
- William Schotte
Hillgrove High School
- Kathleen Barron
- Landon Hill
- Caleb Kimbrough
Kennesaw Mountain High School
- Miranda Andrade
- Jack DeFusco
- Pavan Katragadda
- Benjamin Trussell
North Cobb High School
- Maksymilian Bardwell
Lassiter High School
- Ella Arnett
- Elizabeth Ballenger
- Obadiah Cao
- Wilson Coombs
- Samuel Garrow
- Elizabeth George
- Jack Hansen
- Isaac Hoshide
- Andrea Joya
- Annika Le
- Vikram Sharma
- Nanea Trask
- Caroline Young
Pope High School
- Aanchal Acharya
- Elizabeth Jones
- Ariel Sadan
- Duncan Wilson
- Anna Wright
Walton High School
- Vipul Bansal
- Adam Bethea
- Jack Brawner
- Christopher Chen
- Michelle Gu
- Madeline Halloran
- Nathan Hsu
- Sean Jiao
- Medha Krishna
- Navya Kumar
- Hung Le
- Eugene Li
- Spencer Lieth
- Eric Mo
- Owen Murphy
- Madeline Painter
- Chloe Park
- Connor Park
- Dhriti Raguram
- Carter Ray
- Riley Rice
- Sanjeev Shankar
- Yaocen Shen
- Siddhant Singh
- Grayson Snow
- Tyler Sprague
- Nikhil Srinivasan
- Christina Strakes
- Rashidul Sultan
- Ryan Tan
- Simon Teh
- Rishab Thiyagarajan
- Theodore Thomas
- Ella Tse
- Isha Varughese
- Adam Wang
- Owen Wu
- Grace Xie
- Edward Yao
- Tiffany Yao
- William Zhao
Wheeler High School
- Declan Amerault
- Adele N. Ballantyne
- Abhay Chauhan
- Jaden Choi
- Shachi Deo
- Aishi Dev
- Prisha Dev
- Dagmawi Fasika
- Jackson Frangos
- John Hovsepian
- Nathan Kiesel
- Prajna Malla
- Sidhartha Malla
- Dhriti Naik
- Fiona Peterson
- Kavin Prabhakar
- Aarnav Sadaria
- Akash Singh
- Kaushik Valiveti
- Arshiya Vyas
- Fredrick Wu
- Julia Yu
- Ethan Zhang
