/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/VQ3NJBWLB5FBNB753UX6KEE4MU.jpg "Fifteen of this year's National Merit Scholar semifinalists were at Strawberry Crest High School in east Hillsborough County.")
Of the more than 16,000 students announced this week as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists, 153 are from schools in Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Hernando counties.
A semifinalist must 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.
The pool of semifinalists includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state and represents less than 1% of high school seniors in the nation.
These students can continue in the competition for some 7,140 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $28 million to be offered in the spring.
Here is a list of semifinalists from the Tampa Bay area:
Hillsborough County
Alonso High: Joel Park
Bell Creek Academy: Harnoor Kaur
Berkeley Preparatory School: Ella Adebonojo, David DeCoursy, Liam Devine, Hannah Flitman, Zahed Kachhi, Jackson Kuhn, Oliver Kuperman, Hannah Latif, Emily McDermott, Vineet Sharma, Ryan Touchton, Radhik Wickramasinghe, Aaron Xiong
Bloomingdale High: Samuel Heilman, Jackson Simoneau
Brooks DeBartolo Collegiate High: Cosette Kim, Emilie Park
Carrollwood Day School: Ethan Anderson, Anika Shah, Dylan Swick, Abhiram Thatimatla
Durant High: Brooke Morris
Gaither High: Mackenzie Hall
Jesuit High: Gabriel Brazzeal, Andrew Campbell, Alexander Freund, Tristan Garcia, Ethan Hahn, Fay Herrero, Michael Jacolow, Christopher Kelly, Derek Lezama, Diego Mejia Omana, Edward Sanders, Diego Tobon, Tyler Tyson, Simon Wills
King High: Anastasia Achziger, Julian Carvajal, Susmita Gudla, Ellen Hu, David Jin, Alexander Li, Maxwell Lin, Patrick Mateo, Sethumi Rajapakse, Vignesh Saravanan, Daniel Takshi, Barry Zheng
Middleton High: Alexander Cardona, Vinesh Jarajapu, Rishab Talwani
Newsome High: Brandon Deal, Sean Evans, Kannon Gailey, Muyao Guan, Michael Hemingway, Savin Karki, Cole Pruitt
Plant High: Noah Cheong, Hannah Lockwood, James Marshall, Sage Stark, Nikhil Tolat, Zachary Tomasello, Andres Vidovich.
Riverview High: Sophia Orrego
Robinson High: Melanie Diaz, Christian Noriega, Vikram Sambasivan
Sickles High: Abhinav Devpura, Evan Farnan, Jacob Koenig, Julia Misiunas, Alessandra Skarshinski-Fred, Tyler Szymanski
Steinbrenner High: Caleb Hess, Katrina Lippert, Emanuel Medina, Anthony Menold
Strawberry Crest High: Ananya Balla, Rohan Cheruku, Sonia Chillikatil, Tanvi Garg, Kevalin Gupta, Sarthak Gupta, Teja Katipalli, Rushik Mangavalli, Ashwin Neti, Nitya Padmanabhan, Aarushi Pant, Neha Senthilkumar, Aiden Smith, Sophie Tian, Brooke Tuttle
Sumner High: David Billman
Tampa Preparatory School: Elise Bertolino, Nicholas DeVoe, Brennan Fargher, Lev LeClair
/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tbt/SFA5GAXLCZAUJOIDJCKMUZVQ7Q.JPG "Follow what’s happening in Tampa Bay schools")
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Explore all your optionsUniversal Academy of Florida: Dania Tarabishy
Wharton High: Cooper Priest
Pinellas County
Canterbury School of Florida: Liam Dean
Clearwater Central Catholic High: Joshua Allen
Countryside High: Clinton Farnell, Katherine Miller
Hollins High: Griffin Franzese
East Lake High: Jonah Roth, Nathan Thomas
Lakewood High: Ethan Koh
Largo High: Ashwin Ananthakumaran, Sean Lange, Matthew Lim
Palm Harbor University High: Patricia Boyd, Charles Matthews, Jack Penn, Nayan Shah, Beatrice Shen, Prisha Sherdiwala, Gabriel Stille, Kayla Toohey
Shorecrest Preparatory School: Kian Owensby, Julian Pollack, Alexandra Schratwieser
St. Petersburg Collegiate High: Logan Brown, Vivienne Cseh, George Quilitz
St. Petersburg High: Gavin Gershon, Maya Matheney, Ethan Ruffing, Santiago Suarez
Pasco County
Anclote High: Maxwell Wegener
Land O’ Lakes High: Suyog Acharya, Rohil Agarwal, Tanvi Handoo, Ruth John, Arman Kumaraswamy, Colby Mullins, Himani Patel, Bouddhayan Paul, Ananya Potluri
Mitchell High: Laura Thapaliya, Flora Voit
Sunlake High: Liam Infanger, Roman Muniz, Selena Schulz, Logan Spires
Wendell Krinn Technical High: Rohan Murthi
Wiregrass Ranch High: Tanmay Patil
Hernando County
F.W. Springstead High: Paul Oliveri, Carter Tomasky
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