Livermore Students Named National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists

From LVJUSD: Eight students from the Livermore Valley Joint Unified School District (LVJUSD) have qualified as Semifinalists for a National Merit Scholarship. Out of the 1.6 million high school juniors who took the 2017 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), only about 16,000 - or, 1% - qualify as Semifinalists. These students represent the highest-scoring entrants to the National Merit Scholarship Contest in the country.

Matthew Larson, Andrew Lau, Sydney Myers, Nikita Patra, Colby Smith, and Ashley Zhuang from Granada High School; and Indira D’Souza and Praneeth Nandamuri from Livermore High School are all Semifinalists for the contest. These exemplary students will proceed to compete with students throughout the country to advance to Finalist standing. Finalists are selected based on various criteria submitted by the students and their schools including academic record, PSAT/NMSQT and SAT scores, recommendations, extracurricular accomplishments, and an essay.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) is a not-for-profit organization established in 1955 in order to conduct this scholarship program. This is its 64th annual contest. Scholarships are underwritten by the NMSC, business organizations, and higher education institutions seeking to support the academic pursuits of promising high school scholars.

Kelly Bowers, Ed.D., Superintendent of Schools at LVJUSD, congratulated the Semifinalists. “Competing at this level among over a million of their peers throughout the country is an extraordinary accomplishment,” she said. “We are incredibly proud to see our students succeed academically. It is an outstanding achievement to be named a Semifinalist for such a contested national scholarship. We wish each of them the best as they proceed to the next level of the competition.”

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