The Blue Valley School District has something to celebrate thanks to dozens of high school students in the district who qualified as semifinalists for prestigious National Merit scholarships for 2023.
Driving the news: A total of 49 Blue Valley high school seniors were named National Merit semifinalists last week.
- With that number, Blue Valley has the most semifinalists of any Kansas school district this year, according to district officials.
- The district also came close again to reaching its all-time record of National Merit semifinalists, which it achieved last year with 58 students.
The details: Approximately 16,000 high school senior semifinalists that are selected from across the country have an opportunity to compete for a finalist spot.
- Ultimately, some 7,500 National Merit scholarships worth about a total of $30 million will be offered to finalists next spring.
- The number of scholarship winners named in each state is proportional to the state’s percentage of the nation’s graduating high school seniors.
The details: The finalists will be selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors and announced in spring 2023.
- The seniors applying are assessed on their achievements, such as their academic records, level of difficulty of subjects studied and scores on the Preliminary SAT and/or National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.
- According to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, about 95% of semifinalists nationwide are expected to become finalists, and approximately half of those finalists will then win a scholarship, earning the title of “National Merit Scholar.”
Blue Valley’s 2023 National Merit semifinalists:
Blue Valley High
- Kendall A. Bub
- Audrey R. Che
- Emily A. Clausen
- Janna Goodman
- Genevieve V. Jarrell
- Benjamin D. Parrack
- Nancy T. Pei
- Aarush Tallapragada
- Joaquin I. Toro
- Christian E. Vaz
- Eleanor J. Warren
Blue Valley North
- Nathan I. Bronson
- Luke W. Chen
- Thomas F. Gaffney
- Eric D. Garretson
- Leah Helfer
- Prabhav Pagadala
- Matthew K. Peng
- Elizabeth R. Place
- David B. Stutz
- Johnathan Subramanian
- Kayoko E. Thornton
Blue Valley Northwest
- Ibaad A. Chaudray
- Andrew S. Cho
- Rohan A. Desai
- Tanay V. Dunthuluri
- Gavin C. Goldston
- Evan C. Jiang
- Katherine E. Kirby
- Adam J. Koehler
- Abigail C. Kratofil
- Rick Z. Li
- Sohail S. Mukadam
- Bryce D. Stoddard
- Walter C. Waxman
- Henry O. William
Blue Valley Southwest
- Nicholas J. Hohman
- David J. Mick
- Parker B. Toman
Blue Valley West
- Ruhi Chand
- Abhilash Gotoor
- David O. Han
- Lisa Ji
- Naveen Kannan
- Chinmayee Magesh
- Sarah E. Mollan
- Arav Pant
- Shishir K. Vargheese
- Kevin Xu
