Council Rock, George School Students Named Merit Semifinalists

NEWTOWN, PA — Eleven students from the Council Rock School District and three from George School have been named semifinalists in the 69th annual National Merit Scholarship Program and are now eligible to compete for some 7,140 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $28 million.

Named semifinalists are:

Council Rock High School North

• Saaketh Ananthoju
• Audrey W. Chan
• Angelina N. Douris
• Michael Dvorkin
• Michael C. Fan
• Sanika Jain
• Kelly Z. Lao
• Brady T. Ott
• Arnav Rajesh
• Shane I. Wattenmaker
• Kevin Yuan

George School

• Andrew Luisi
• Huadong Weng
• Siyuan Xu

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 7,140 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $28 million that will be offered next spring.

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.

Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2022 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, 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 national total of graduating seniors.

National Merit Scholarship winners of 2024 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July.