Four Kirkland high school students qualify for National Merit Scholarship semifinals

Four Kirkland high school students are up for $33 million in scholarships after qualifying for the semifinals of the National Merit Scholarship Foundation on Thursday, Sept. 15.

September 15, 2016 5:23 pm
Four Kirkland high school students qualify for National Merit Scholarship semifinals

Four Kirkland high school students are up for $33 million in scholarships after qualifying for the semifinals of the National Merit Scholarship Foundation on Thursday, Sept. 15.

The list includes Adrian Plenefisch from Juanita High, and Lake Washington High students Maya Carndall-Malcolm, Louis Norred and Hunter Trewin. In total, 33 Lake Washington School District students qualified for the semifinals, which includes more than 16,000 students nationwide.

The Reporter featured Trewin and his foundation to help low-income musicians last spring.

The list also includes five students at Lake Washington School District’s International Community School, which is based in Kirkland, and nine students from the Tesla STEM High School, which is based in Redmond. Kirkland residents Kyran Adams, Aditya Kumar and Benjamin Zabback made the list.

About 15,000 students advance to the finalist level, and can compete for 7,500 National Merit Scholarships.

The students qualified based on 2015 Pre-SAT scores and a National Merit Scholarship qualifying test.

LWSD Semifinalists

Eastlake High School:

· Melissa Birchfield (Sammamish)

· Samantha Moynihan (Sammamish)

International Community School:

· McKenna Conlin (Redmond)

· Kartik Iyer (Sammamish)

· Alicia Kacharia (Redmond)

· Taeheon Kim (Redmond)

· Irene Thomas (Redmond)

Juanita High School:

· Adrian Plenefisch (Kirkland)

Lake Washington High School:

· Maya Crandall-Malcolm (Redmond)

· Louis Norred (Redmond)

· Hunter Trewin (Kirkland)

Redmond High School:

· Vishal Baskar (Sammamish)

· Sophia Chang (Sammamish)

· Marcelo Cunningham (Redmond)

· Falak Daud (Sammamish)

· Shloak Jain (Redmond)

· Siri Mellem (Woodinville)

· Jaehee Park (Redmond)

· Martin Randal (Redmond)

· Marium Raza (Woodinville)

· Irika Sinha (Redmond)

· Dana Spillinger (Redmond)

· Pearl Thijssen (Woodinville)

· Oliver Zhou (Redmond)

Tesla STEM High School:

· Kyran Adams (Kirkland)

· Stephen Fitch (Redmond)

· Hemil Gajjar (Redmond)

· Michael Gringauze (Redmond)

· Aditya Kumar (Kirkland)

· Rishi Ramesh (Redmond)

· Abhinav Singh (Redmond)

· Varsha Veeramachaneni (Sammamish)

· Benjamin Zabback (Kirkland)