53 PUSD Students Named National Merit Scholarship Program Semifinalists

A record number of 53 Poway Unified School District seniors were named semifinalists in the 57th annual National Merit Scholarship Program, it was announced Monday.

The students are among 16,000 who will compete for the 8,300 National Merit Scholarships—a total prize worth $34 million.

According to PUSD, the number beats the record of 36 seniors who were selected as semifinalists in the system.

The students received praise from local leaders.

"We are proud to honor these students and wish them continued success as they pursue future educational and career opportunities," PUSD President Penny Ranftle said in a statement.

PUSD Superintendent John Collins congratulated the "outstanding students for receiving this honor, which reflects on individual student performance and academic ability."

The scholarship awards are based on both academic and application requirements including SAT scores and high marks throughout high school.

A following is a list of students named as semifinalists:

Poway High School

• Karyn Brown
• Neil Dalvie
• Won-Ji Lee
• Stephen Sabo
• Anna Schwab
• Peter Thomas

 Rancho Bernardo High School

• Alex An
• Jennifer Chalam
• Carrie Chen
• Christine Curl
• Helen Fang
• David Hu
• Yifan Huang
• Connie Kang
• Rachel Lee
• Morgan Mastrovich
• Kamal Obbad
• Seth Padmabandu
• Vivek Rangaswamy
• Emily Zhao

Del Norte High School

• Diane Heflin

 Mt. Carmel High School

• Shuchi Chaturvedi
• Savannah Crowl
• Blake Eaton
• Qinyi Fan
• Jason Gao
• Timothy Kinsey
• Amanda Vu
• Olivia Wu
• Janis Yue

Westview High School

• Tony Chen
• Lydia Chin
• George Du
• Adam Eagle
• Sean Fowler
• Joshua Hafford
• Sherry Huang
• Divya Kothandapani
• Christine Li
• Lasya Marla
• Alex Nguyen
• Andrew Ouyang
• Robert Shaw
• Benjamin Statz
• Brenda Tang
• George Tye
• Eric Wang
• Edward Xiao
• Julia Yang
• Benjamin Yu
• Peter Zhao
• Snow Zhu