69 Cobb students, 3 from Marietta named National Merit semifinalists

Thomas Hartwell, Marietta Daily Journal, Ga.
·2 min read

Sep. 15—Sixty-nine Cobb Schools seniors and three from Marietta High School have been named 2022 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists.

The students are among 16,000 named by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation this week.

Walton High School in east Cobb had 34 students on the list, while Wheeler High School accounted for 21 semifinalists. Other Cobb high schools with semifinalists include Campbell, Harrison, Hillgrove, Kennesaw Mountain, Lassiter, Pope and Sprayberry.

The seniors have the opportunity to compete for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $30 million that will be offered next spring.

About 95% of the semifinalists named are expected to be finalists this year, and about half of those finalists will receive a National Merit Scholarship, according to the organization.

High school juniors entered the 2022 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, which served as an initial screen of entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, representing less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

To become a finalist, the semifinalist and a high school official must submit a detailed scholarship application, providing information about the semifinalist's academic record, participation in school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards. A semifinalist must also 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.

Finalists will be notified of their designation in February, and merit scholars will be selected from that group. National Merit Scholarship winners will be announced between April and July.

What follows are the names and schools of local merit semifinalists:

Marietta High School

— Alexandra Audrain

— Zachary Harrison

— Mateo Rios

Campbell High School

— Sameer Aurora

— Lauren Lee

Harrison High School

— Andrew Hendershot

Hillgrove High School

— Ky Tran

Kennesaw Mountain High School

— Noah Flanagan

— Soumit Guntupalli

— Ryan McKee

— Dandre Varela

— Paige Woodham

Lassiter High School

— Faaris Hussain

Pope High School

— Patrick Astorga

— Oluwaseminire Oloyede

— Madeleine Stewart

Sprayberry High School

— Bradley Scott

Walton High School

— Zain Akram

— Mark Arshavsky

— Stephanie Bergman

— Lawrence Cai

— Wonho Choi

— Fevin Felix

— Fiona Guo

— Sahil Handa

— Katelyn Henry

— Ryann Jacobson

— Saloni Jain

— Chinmay Joshi

— Aadi Katta

— Sungwon Kim

— Abhinav Kona

— Abhishek Kona

— Maxwell Leamy

— Daniel Liu

— Vikas Malepati

— Ana Mocklar

— Cynthia Peng

— Imaan Pirani

— Neeray Ravirala

— Aryan Roy

— Advaith Shivaram

— Jonathan Shu

— Nairita Siddiqui

— Lawrence Thomas

— Kunling Tong

— Abhay Vittal

— Joseph Walter

— Asad Yamin

— Emma Zeng

— Franklin Zhao

Wheeler High School

— Rhea Baghel

— Evan Bauer

— Smera Bhatia

— Pranav Devarinti

— Arjun Dewan

— Carson Felton

— Angela Francis

— Archishma Goli

— Kyle Hampton

— Samyukta Iyer

— Sujit Iyer

— William Jewel

— Charlie Jin

— Kavita Kar

— Nelitha Kulasiri

— Nishka Mirkhelkar

— Achyutan Narayanan

— Vijay Shastri

— Chirag Shetty

— Emma Teng

— Satya Tetali

Follow Thomas Hartwell on Twitter at twitter.com/MDJThomas.