Eighty-four seniors in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District and Palo Alto Unified School District have been recognized as semifinalists in the 2024 National Merit Scholarship Program.

These seniors are among the 16,000 semifinalists named across the nation, who represent the top 1% of the highest scoring students who took the PSAT last October.

To apply for the final stage, semifinalists must submit academic records, extracurricular activities, employment history, SAT and ACT scores, an essay, as well as a letter of recommendation. Approximately 15,000 students will be named as finalists, with half of the finalists competing for 7,140 scholarships worth nearly $28 million next spring.

Scholarships will be announced between April and July 2024.

The MVLA semifinalists are:

Mountain View

• Aarush Agarwal
• Brandon C. Ang
• Samika D. Arun
• James L. Bankhead
• Preston Bhat
• Leah H. Bilstad
• Chloe N. Chan
• Anna J. Corson
• Jazlyn Dias
• Madeline L. Kamprath
• Sabina Anne K. Leaver
• Daniel W. Lief
• Alyssa L. Ong
• Tim J. Van Antwerpen
• Emma J. Zhang

Los Altos

• Pranav I. Butaney
• Paula Casares-Iglesias
• Michael A. Cheilek-Klaiber
• Isabelle Y. Chen
• Adit Chintamaneni
• Samuel W. Cousins
• Jennifer A. Cruden
• Audrey M. Fan
• Amanda L. Guo
• Nikash Gupta
• Matthew J. Kim
• Bridget G. Liu
• Julia T. Mao
• Manonmani Raffill
• Ryan J. Wang
• Sabrina Yen-Ko

The PAUSD semifinalists are:

Henry M. Gunn High School

• Varun Bhave
• Emma S. Cao
• Timon A. Cappella-Pimor
• Vivien Chen
• Roger J. Fan
• Megan C. Ho
• Heeseo E. Jeong
• Jaehyun Jeong
• Samuel Jin
• Jeffrey Kang
• Jason R. Kilgore
• Albert A. Lee
• Christopher M. Lee
• Kai Lee
• David Li
• Fiona Li
• Alexander E. Liu
• Amann S. Mahajan
• Om Mahesh
• Wayne M. Mei
• Jacob D. Olshen
• Pranav Pabba
• Rohan J. Rao
• Joseph Rueff
• Julian I. Schultz
• Chinyoung Shao
• Irene L. Tsen
• Bryan Xiao
• Steve Zhang
• Ethan Zhou
• Luke Q. Zhou

Palo Alto High School

• Michael Birmingham
• Eugenie Cha
• Angelina M. Chen
• Abigail H. Friedland
• Grace K. Gormley
• Jada Y. King
• Jacqueline Li
• Jonathan S. Liu
• Mihir S. Menon
• Christopher D. Owens
• Jeremie Rault-Wang
• Rohit Seshadri
• Siddarth Shamdasani-Sen
• Hanwen Shi
• Zachary B. Spain
• Natasha Strauss
• David R. Tomz
• Avi Verma
• William C. Wang
• Jacob Winefeld
• Katherine L. Wu
• Evelyn Zhang