Last month, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation began announcing this year’s National Merit Scholarship Winners – and 18 Harker graduating seniors have been named thus far.
Winners of the National Merit $2,500 scholarship are Stephanie Chen, Adarsh Battu, Shivani Chandrashekaran, Christopher Fu, Saachi Jain, Divyahans Gupta, Angela Ma, Rahul Sridhar, Aditya Batra, Meena Chetty, Vikram Sundar, Brandon Yang, Albert Zhao, Zareen Choudhury and Varun Mohan. These scholarships are awarded based on criteria such as academic standing, standardized test scores, community service, recommendations by school officials and student essays.
Harker also had three College-Sponsored Merit Scholarship winners. These awards are given by college officials to National Merit finalists who plan to attend the colleges that they represent. Winners of these awards receive between $500 and $2,000 for every year of attendance at their chosen school, for up to four years. Rebecca Chen and Nikkan Ghosh both received scholarships from the University of Southern California, and Benjamin Huchley’s award was courtesy of Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
Thanks to Sarina Vij, grade 12, and debate teachers Carol Green, Greg Achten and Jonathan Peele for providing this update!
UCLA Forensics Tournament, Jan. 11-13
In policy, Nitya Mani, grade 10, and Panny Shan, grade 9, advanced to the quarterfinals. Shannon Hong, grade 9, was named the ninth-place speaker and Shan was the third-place speaker.
In Lincoln-Douglas debate: Karan Das-Grande, grade 12, and Raymon Xu, grade 11, were triple-octafinalists. Junior Srikar Pyda was a double octafinalist and Pranav Reddy, grade 10, reached the octafinals. Reddy was also named 20th speaker.
Arizona State University, Jan. 10-13
Harker Public Forum students did extremely well at the Arizona State University tournament this past weekend. With 214 registered debaters, Harker had six upper school and one middle school team clear to elimination rounds. Junior Zoe Papakipos and Samali Sahoo, grade 9, barely missed the elimination rounds with a record of 4-2 in preliminary rounds. Upper and middle school students all worked together at the tournament, discussing arguments and strategies and preparing for upcoming rounds.
Alex Lam and Aditya Dhar, both grade 8, placed in the top 32 teams after meeting another Harker team in the double-octofinals. Seniors Pranav Sharma and Varun Gudapati as well as Aadyot Bhatnagar and Stanley Xie, both grade 10, met other Harker teams in the octofinal round and thus placed in the top 16 teams at the tournament.
Grade 11 students Maneesha Panja and Sebi Nakos as well as sophomores David Lin and Andrew Jin lost in the quarterfinal round (top eight) after going undefeated in the preliminary rounds. Jithin Vellian, grade 11, and Nikhil Kishore, grade 10, met another Harker team in the quarterfinal and thus placed in the top eight at the tournament.
Shivani Mitra, grade 12, and Stephanie Lu, grade 11, made it to the semifinal round of the tournament where they were eliminated and thus placed in the top four teams at the tournament.
In addition to team accomplishments, a number of Harker students were awarded with individual speaker awards. Lin earned fourth overall speaker, Nakos was eighth, Reddy was ninth, Jin was 10th, Mitra was 14th and Lu took 24th speaker out of 214 competitors.
Myers Park High School Tournament, North Carolina, Jan. 3-6
At the 40th annual Myers Park Laird Lewis Invitational in North Carolina, Harker Public Forum had some great results. Debating on the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, the teams of Suraj Jagadeesh and Abhinav Ketineni, both grade 9, as well as seniors David Grossman and Nikhil Agarwal, were triple octofinalists. Kevin Duraiswamy, grade 11, and Reyhan Kader, grade 12, were quarterfinalists and seniors Anuj Sharma and Aneesh Chona advanced to the finals of the tournament.
At the same tournament, Andy Wang, grade 11, won first place in original oratory and was a semifinalist in impromptu speaking. Warren Zhang, grade 12, was a finalist in congressional debate.
University School “Sunvitational” Tournament, Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Jan. 10-14
Arjun Kumar, grade 11, took second place in congressional debate and Steven Wang, grade 10, was a semifinalist in extemporaneous speaking and impromptu speaking.