Over 150 Local Students Named National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalists
By Thomas Nothel
Over 150 Students attending High Schools on the North Shore of Long Island have been named a 2025 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist.
This is a rare achievement and a prestigious recognition. It is determined by the students' top PSAT scores from their junior year.
The students are now eligible to continue in the competition to be named a 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program Finalist.
The 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program Scholars are competing for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth a total of $26 million. The competition will continue through the spring of 2025.
There are over 1.3 million initial entrants in the National Merit Scholarship Program, from which only about 16,000 students nationwide - are designated as Semifinalists.
The PSAT scores of students who met program participation requirements were used to designate a pool of more than 16,000 Semifinalists on a state allocation basis.
Semifinalists are the highest scorers in each of the 50 states and represent less than one percent of each state’s high school seniors.
Below is the list of local Students named a Semifinalist:
Cold Spring Harbor High School
Ava Coco; Milan Lustig; Stephen Schmidt; Aidan Smith
Glen Head - North Shore High School
Seamus Hughes; Raymond Lin; Wenqi Xiao
Locust Valley High School
Giovanni Gambino
Oyster Bay High School
Brandon Antonetti; Adrian Kim
Great Neck South High School
Luna Bae; Christina Bai; Megan Chin-Lam Chan; Edmund Gan; Jonathan Jia Ruiqi Liu; Paige Louie; Althea Ou; Yilin Qiao; Sarah H. Sun; William Tsang’; Evelyn Won; Erin Wong Yujin; Wu Edward Xu;Ivan Xu; Richard L. Xu; Edison Yuan; Jixuan Zhang; Laura Zhang; Zican Zhang; Kalli Zhu
Great Neck North High School
Johnathan Ahdout; Justin J. Chen; Valerie Lan;Jacob Levine; Ashley M. Liu; Aiden Maher; Dillan Palma; Daliah Segal; Lotus W. Shwe; Tamas Smulovics; Isaac Xu; Isaac Yan; Logan Z. Ye; Zachary Zar
North Shore Hebrew Academy High School
Ilana Greenberg
Hicksville High School
Kimberly Widjaja
Jericho High School
Shi-Tao Chang; Justin Chen; Ryan Cheung; Katie-Jiwoo Choi; Vishrut Goyal; Misha Gujja; Lilly Horowitz; Michael Jiao; Lisa Jin; Edeline Jung; Safir Khandaker; David Kim-Shoemaker; Michelle Liu; Samyra Mahiba; Agastya Mittal; Max Scharf; Gabrielle Shahaf; Madeline Shek; Ashlyn Thitibordin; Vincent Yang; Jerry Zhang; Leo Zhao; Lydia Zhou
Friends Academy
Terry Ye
Portledge High School
William Bodian; Kjell Goldstein
Manhasset High School
Sophia Chainan;i Hannah Chang; Jonathan Chen; Mingxin Chen; Colin Hairabedian Loic Hairabedian; Jackson Kang; Jonas Kim; Chelsea Lim; Rachel Liu; Alex Lu; Stephen Lu; Henry Ma; Peter Martelli; John Matos; Grace Punzalan; Alena Tsai; Emily Zhao
Herricks High School
Maya Aboutaleb; Afnan Ali; Shome Chakraborty; Lucy Liu; Diane Ma; Krish Maheshwari; Pratham Patel; Maximilian Peng; Kaitlyn Rams; Vidhi Shah;
New Hyde Park Memorial High School
Brice Chiu; Rachel Jacob; Clayton Yu
Port Washington - Schreiber High School
Jayden Doshi; Julian Kimball; Austin Li; Ezra Schulmiller; Brigid Southard
Roslyn High School
Ethan Berkowitz; Sarah Fernbach; Ethan J. Lee; Elaina Li; Benjamin Quadri;
Anika Tolat
Syosset High School
Derek Chen; Frank He; Marcus Hoshino; Shan Hsieh; Connor Jin; Katherine Li; Simonne Lim; Jasmine Liu; Yuyang Liu; Sunay Malhotra; Raheel Nabi; Lance Phung; Michael Ren; Corey Schack; Krishiv K. Shah; Jaysukh P. Singh; Samuel Wang; Zhaotang Wang;Joann Woo; Katherine Yi; Winston Zhou
Harborfields High School
Francis R. DeGregorio; Alexander Y. Meagher; Andrew L. Walden;
Walt Whitman High School
John Marr
St. Anthony's High School
Joseph Philip
Northport High School
Dora Fields; Michaela Tumsuden