The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the names of more than 16,000 semifinalists this week, including several in East Tennessee.
These high school seniors were selected out of more than 1 million entrants across the U.S. to advance into the semifinals. Now, they have the opportunity to compete for the 6,700 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million in total, according to the organization
.About 95% of the semifinalists are expected to attain finalist standing, and about half of the finalists will win a National Merit Scholarship.
Here's who made the semifinals.
Knox County
- Karuna Chen, Farragut High School
- Evan Conger, Farragut High School
- Cayden Crouchet, Farragut High School
- Catherine Driscoll, Knoxville Christian Academy
- Diana Gao, Farragut High School
- Malcolm Gao, Farragut High School
- Benjamin Green, L&N STEM Academy
- Ella Huang, Farragut High School
- Aidan J. Johnson, Bearden High School
- Ari Kim, Farragut High School
- Samuel E. Kowalski, Webb School
- Tiffany Lian, Farragut High School
- Arman Oguz, Farragut High School
- Dominick Pelaia, L&N STEM Academy
- Dinh Phan, Farragut High School
- Samuel Pu, Farragut High School
- Kaiser Ramjee, Webb School
- Roshan Ramanan, Farragut High School
- Uma Seal, Farragut High School
- Uday Sujithkumar, Farragut High School
- Harrison Toon, Farragut High School
- Sebastian van Nes, West High School
- Marco Vasko-Klima, West High School
- Stewart Wang, L&N STEM Academy
- Andrew Weast, Knoxville Christian Academy
- Kirby M. Willoughby, Webb School
- Rickie Wu, Farragut High School
- Ella Ye, Farragut High School
- Caroline Zhao, Farragut High School
- Mary S. Zengel, Knoxville Catholic High School
Maryville
- Alexandra Autry, Maryville High School
- Alexander Luhn, Maryville High School
- Alexa Mabe, Heritage High School
- Cara Minutolo, William Blount High School
- Samuel Webb, Maryville High School
Oak Ridge
- Emily Han, Oak Ridge High School
- Emmett O'Meara, Oak Ridge High School
- Duncan Rowden, Oak Ridge High School
- Simon Weston, Oak Ridge High School
Sullivan County
- Abdulrahman Alyafi, Dobyns-Bennett High School
Washington County
- Sean Bushell, Science Hill High School
- Atticus W. Francisco, Daniel Boone High School
- Sunny Li, Science Hill High School
- Allie O'Neal, Science Hill High School
- Arnav Patel, Science Hill High School
- Ashini Patel, Science Hill High School
- Lucas N. Williams, Daniel Boone High School
Dozens of other students qualified across the state, including in the Memphisand Nashville areas.
Caitlyn Meisner is the K-12 education reporter for Knox News.
Email tips and story ideas to caitlyn.meisner@knoxnews.com.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: See 2027 National Merit Scholarship semifinalists from East Tennessee
