As announced by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC), 25 Lake Washington School District (LWSD) high school seniors have qualified as semifinalists in the 56th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

A total of 16,000 high school seniors nationwide have qualified. These students will have the opportunity to continue in the competition for some 8,300 National Merit Scholarships, worth more than $34 million, which will be offered next spring.

Students qualified for these awards by completing the 2010 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. The nationwide pool of semifinalists, which represents fewer than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state.

Redmond High School had the highest number of recipients in the district, with 14 students named as semifinalists:

Maya N. Balakrishnan, Tara G. Balakrishnan, Rebecca F. Ballantyne, Michael A. Gilroy, Benjamin C. Keller,  Jihoon Lee, Nolan A. Miller, Ananya Murali, Preetum Nakkiran, Kevin R. Parker, Dhaaruni Sreenivas, Sophia Y. Xu, Miriam C. Zeitz and Edward C. Zhang.

The following students in LWSD are also semifinalists:

Eastlake High School
Blake Crinklaw

International Community School
Pauline H. Chane, Edward M. Cordell, Jessica S. Jin and Jack D. Speelman.

Juanita High School
Audrey H. Hsu, Sam H. Schwabacher and Luke Sironski-White.

Lake Washington High School
Peter J. Dolan, Suejean Hwangpo and Jake O. Nash.