191 FCPS Students Named 2025 National Merit Semifinalists

One hundred ninety-one students from 19 Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) are among the semifinalists named by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation for 2025. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), which also serves as the Governor’s Regional School for Northern Virginia, has 81 semifinalists.

All semifinalists are eligible to compete for 6,870 National Merit Scholarship awards worth nearly $26 million, to be awarded in spring 2025. Semifinalists advance to finalist standing in the competition by meeting high academic standards and other requirements including a recommendation from a high school official.

Fairfax County Public Schools 2025 National Merit semifinalists are: 

• Centreville High School: Alexander Arevalo, Jack Koo, Codrin Rau.
• Chantilly High School: Vikhyaath Ale, Neha Baskar, Himagnya Elaprolu, Eleanor Hawkins, Risha Krishnan, Kyungwon Lee, Jack Morgan, Andrew Shear, Akshara Subburam, Anshul Yarlagadda.
• Edison High School: Nicolas Argueta-Vasquez, Grayston Haupt.
• Fairfax High School: Ethan Gertz, Ellie Russell, Kai Stone, Shubha Udipi.
• Hayfield Secondary School: Mateo Kamarck.
• Herndon High School: Harold Kim.
• Lake Braddock Secondary School: Jonah Ascoli, Cooper Bennett, Hailey Hackbarth, Aditya Hegde, Arham Mohammad, Ethan Nguyen, Grace Park, Ella Ridgway, Gregory Woo.
• Langley High School: Katie Chen, Ariaana Downing, Leon Huang, Emily Hur, Zelmay Jan, Danna Jia, Arnav Ketineni, Amy Key, Chinmayee Lanka, Jayden Lee, Ethan Liu, Bryce Myers, Lindsey Newberg, Brendan Oakes, Vishwa Rakasi, Anniyah Rizvi, Riley Seewer, John Wu, Raymond Zhang. 
• Madison High School: Ariel Chasin, Charlotte Feigin, Nathan Goss, Anika Krishnaiyer, Robert Martirosyan, Michael Papadakis, Neha Parameswaran, Joseph Stafford, Kyan Yang.
• Marshall High School: Shrey Desai, Gabriela Konde, Pradhyumnan Rajasekar, Ethan Stregack, Yue Xin Wang.  
• McLean High School: Anaya Batish, Aria Colaco, Andrew Egorin, Lisa Hu, Phoebe Jang, Axel Lundback, Rachel Noh, Blake Powell, Peyton Rydzewski, David Sheng, Jakob Siyoni, Thanh-Hoa Tran-Luu, Lauren Wood, Aileen Wu, Eric Xue, Claire Yan.
• Oakton High School: Christopher Campbell, Isaiah Garrett, Benjamin Habyarimana, Bumkyu Kang, Adrian Li, Jackson Mika, Seth Parcell, Lisa Sun, Joshua Wang, Luke Whitlock, Ken Zhou.
• Robinson Secondary School: Alexander Gould, Victoria Khvan, Maxim Miller, Peter Sheridan.
• South Lakes High School: Emily Conway, Aneesh Mandapati, Andrew Wood.
• Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST): Ryeen Afkhami Aghda, Ishan Ajwani, Nikhil Alladi, Arjun Babla, Akansha Bagga, Alex Bakalov, Sanchali Banerjee, Arnav Bhalla, Samarth Bhargav, William Black, Logan Bradley, Jude Caldwell, Rabia Chadha, Dhruv Chandna, Claire Chen, Julia Chen, Andrew Choi, Nathaniel Crescioli, Asha Das, Niels-Oliver DeChaine, Jacob Foster, Ashrita Gandhari, Avni Garg, Filip Georgievski, Claire Guo, Arnav Gupta, Deven Hagen, Jason Hao, Mandy Huang, Sophia Huang, Grace Im, Soham Jain, Chris Jia, Ashvin Kala, Hudson Keeler, Symthasree Koganti, Rohan Kotla, Siddarth Kumar, Rishabh Kumaran, Peter Laosiri, Abigail Lee, Justin Lee, Avery Li, Lucas Libelo, Sophia Lin, Aniketh Luchmapurkar, Jasmine Ma, Alexander Mather, Eloise Minnigh, Benjamin Moseley, Saanvi Nandikonda, Bryan Nguyen, Deen Noori, Abhinav Palikala, Phoebe Pan, Poorna Prakash, Samvrit Rao, Pratyush Saxena, Aaryan Shah, Shrey Sharma, Patrick Shi, John Shinkman, Aaryan Sumesh, Anish Suvarna, Simon Thomas, Nicholas Toskey, Ophelia Tulchinsky, Leonardo Valli, Avnith Vijayram, Anna Wisniewski, Anthony Xu, Gabriel Xu, Vivian Xue, Pallavi Yalamanchilli, Hui Peng John Yao, Drew Zauel, Leah Zhang, Ray Zhang, Victoria Zhang, Julia Zherdetski, Alan Zhu.
• West Potomac High School: Samuel Glassman.
• West Springfield High School: Cole Daigle, Sophia Johnson, Charlie McClurken-Orr.
• Westfield High School: Jihae Jun, Aravind Siva, Christopher Zhai.
• Woodson High School: Morgan Altier, Chloe Choi, Sean Cranford, Elizabeth Doan, Laehun Kim, Stephen Labys.

More than 16,000 high school seniors were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for 2025. More than 1.3 million juniors entered the 2025 National Merit program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which serves as the initial screen of program entrants.  

The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents 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. These determinations are made by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, not FCPS or individual schools.

Three types of Merit Scholarship awards will be offered in 2025: National Merit $2,500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships.

Merit Scholarship winners will be announced next spring.

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