Today, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced that 52 Harker seniors, more than 25 percent of the Class of 2022, were named semifinalists in the National Merit Scholarship Program. Semifinalists represent less than 1 percent of high school students who took the 2020 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Qualifying Test as juniors. They become finalists by submitting a scholarship application that includes their academic record, a summary of participation in school activities and awards they’ve received.
This year’s semifinalists are:
Malar Bala, Laszlo Bollyky, Erica Cai, Teresa Cai, Cady Chen, Charles Ding, Alice Feng, Adheet Ganesh, Yvan Grinspan, Arnav Gupta, Elvis Han, Victoria Han, Catherine He, Mark Hu, Angelina Yuzifovich, Sinaya Joshi, Vishnu Kannan, Saahas Kohli , Anirudh Kotamraju, Aidan Lincke, Alex Liou, Michelle Liu, Aaron Lo, Kavita Murthy, Kate Olsen, Sujith Pakala, Muthu Panchanatham, Vienna Parnell, Rishab Parthasarathy, Anishka Raina, Sasvath Ramachandran, Bodhi Saha, Dhruv Saoji, Yejin Song, Cindy Su, Aditya Tagore, Emily Tan, Keshiv Tandon, Zeel Thakkar, Rohan Thakur, Nicole Tian, Michael Tran, Pranav Varmaraja, Austin Wang, Daniel Wu, Esther Wu, Alina Yuan, Irene Yuan, April Zhang, William Zhao, Emily Zhou and Gloria Zhu.
Last weekend, senior Erica Cai gave a presentation about colorism in Japan at an event held by the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Education (SPICE). During the spring 2021 semester, Cai became an honoree of the 2021 Reischauer Scholars Program along with fellow seniors Kailash Ranganathan and Daniel Wu. The Reischauer Scholars Program selects 25 to 30 high school students each year to embark on an intensive study of a topic related to Japan. The program was named in honor Edwin O. Reischauer, a former ambassador to Japan.
Rising junior Sarah Fathima Mohammed today was named one of five National Student Poets of 2021. The National Student Poets Program, which is run by the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Alliance for Young Artists & Writers, selects five young poets each year from different regions of the country as National Student Poets. The program was started in 2012 by Michelle Obama and the Presidential Arts Committee and is open to students in grades 10 and 11 who have received a gold or silver medal in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. After being selected, National Student Poets spend the next year promoting poetry in their communities through works such as service projects, poetry readings and workshops as well as attending a variety of events.
Recent graduates Vivian Jin and Katie Li were today announced as winners of college-sponsored scholarships in the final round of National Merit Scholars announced in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program. The announcement brings the total number of Harker winners to 20. Congratulations to all of the students who were recognized in this year’s program!
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June 2:
Utkarsh Priyam ’21 was today announced as another winner of a National Merit College-Sponsored Scholarship from Purdue University, bringing the total number of Harker winners this year to 18. These scholarships are funded by US colleges and universities and provide winners with funding for their undergraduate education for up to four years at the institution financing the scholarship. In April, Priyam was named a semifinalist in the 2021 Presidential Scholars competition. The next round of National Merit scholarship winners is slated to be announced July 12.
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May 19:
An additional 15 seniors won National Merit scholarships last week, bringing the total number of winners so far to 17. This round of $2,500 scholarships was awarded to National Merit finalists in each state who were assessed according to their academic achievements and their potential to do well in college. The winners were: Manasa Bhimaraju, Preston Ellis, Jason Lin, Andrew Lu, Claire Luo, Arya Maheshwari, Akshay Manglik, Krishay Mukhija, Aditya Singhvi, Andrew Sun, Betsy Tian, Daniel Wang, N Wang, Sidra Xu and Russell Yang.
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April 30:
Yesterday, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced winners of corporate-sponsored scholarships in the 2021 National Merit Scholarship Program. Seniors Fonda Hu and Helen Zhu were named winners in this round, each receiving scholarships from NVidia. Corporate sponsors award scholarships to National Merit finalists who are children of employees, are residents of the companies’ local communities or are pursuing careers in industries the sponsor supports.
This is the first round of winners announced in this year’s National Merit Scholarship Program. This story will be updated if and when more Harker winners become known.
Yesterday, rising eighth grader Danielle Steinbach was named a finalist in the 2021 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Steinbach’s project explored how to improve the accuracy of diagnosing and treating neurological disorders and brain diseases using neural networks. Students who enter the competition each create a video explaining their solution to a current scientific problem. Finalists are awarded $1,000 and are invited to take part in a summer mentorship program with a 3M scientist. The grand prize winner will receive $25,000 and a two-day, one-night trip. The final event is scheduled to take place at 3M’s headquarters in Saint Paul, Minn., in October.
In the final winner announcement of the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program, 2020 graduate Zara Vakath was named a winner of college-sponsored scholarship from Claremont McKenna College. The final total of Harker scholarship winners stands at 23. Congratulations to all this year’s winners!
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June 3, 2020:
On Wednesday, recent graduates Quentin Clark, Eric Fang, Lila Gorman, Phillip Han, Nathan Sudeep and Anthony Xu were named winners of college-sponsored scholarships in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program, bringing the total number of Harker scholarship winners to 22. Another round of winners is set to be announced in July.
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May 13, 2020:
Today, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the second round of winners in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program, and 11 Harker seniors are among them. They are: Kathy Fang, David Feng, Jeffrey Fung, Alyssa Huang, Sahil Jain, Allison Jia, Eileen Li, Kyle Li, Jack Pearce, Thomas Rainow and Bryan Wang. These students are among 2,500 high school seniors chosen to receive National Merit $2,500 Scholarships. More winners are set to be announced in June and July.
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April 28, 2020:
Last week, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the first round of winners of 2020 National Merit scholarships, and seniors Rohan Cherukuri, Mahika Halepete, Madison Huynh, Jessica Jiang and Nellie Tonev were named winners of corporate-sponsored scholarships. Each of the students had reached the finalist portion of the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Competition. The next three rounds of winners will be announced in May, June and July.
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Sept. 24, 2019:
Earlier this month, 63 seniors were named semifinalists in the 2020 National Merit Scholarship Program, placing them among the 16,000 high school students who make up less than 1 percent of the more than 1.5 million students who entered the contest as juniors last year. Students enter each year by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT). This year’s National Merit semifinalists are:
Prerana Acharyya, Jai Bahri, Nakul Bajaj, Martin Bourdy, Katelyn Chen, Evan Cheng, Andrew Cheplyansky, Rohan Cherukrui, Quentin Clark, Rishi Dange, Eric Fang, Kathy Fang, David Feng, Finn Frankis, Lauren Fu, Jeffrey Fung, Lila Gorman, Ellen Guo, Mahika Halepete, Phillip Han, Alyysa Huang, Madison Huynh, Rashmi Iyer, Sahil Jain, Allison Jia, Jessica Jiang, Matthew Jin, Annebelle Ju, Montek Kalsi, Naviya Kapadia, Jatin Kohli, Jeffrey Kwan, Shyl Lamba, Max Lee, Eileen Li, Kyle Li, Emily Liu, Carolyn Lu, Vani Mohindra, Kalyan Narayanan, Rakesh Nori, Sana Pandey, Jack Pearce, Thomas Rainow, Sanjay Rajasekharan, Amla Rashingkar, Chaitanya Ravuri, Sachin Shah, Nikhil Sharma, Rohan Sonecha, Nathan Sudeep, Christine Tang, Michael Tang, Anika Tiwari, Nellie Tonev, Jin Tuan, Nerine Uyanik, Zara Vakath, Bryan Wang, Nathan Wang, Anthony Xu, Jacqueline Yang and Jeffrey Yang.
Additionally, 72 seniors were named commended students for their outstanding performance on the PSAT/NMSQT:
Arjun Akkiraju, Kai Ming Ang, Kenya Aridomi, Ekdatha Arramreddy, Vibha Arramreddy, Anvi Banga, Ryan Brown, Darshan Chahal, Gabriel Chai, Eva Chang, Cynthia Chen, Emily Chen, Kevin Chen, Emily Cheng, Henry Cuningham, Kaitlyn Dai, Reiya Das, Jeremy Ding, Mihir Dixit, Sidharth Dudyala, Roni Gagneja, Nina Gee, Anna Gert, Aditi Ghalsasi, Avi Gulati, Aarzu Gupta, Grace Hajjar, Jack Hansen, Richard Hu, Grace Huang, Jedd Hui, Vishnu Jaisim, Arnav Joshi, Nikhita Karra, Mahi Kolla, Sejal Krishnan, Asmit Kumar, Allison Lee, Emma Li, Bennett Liu, Jeffrey Liu, Annie Ma, Grant Miner, Naveen Mirapuri, Shomrik Mondal, Natashad Moorajani, Arushi Nety, Karthik Nukala, Jason Pan, Gina Partridge, Sriya Prathfuri, William Rainow, Ahsna Reddy, Riva Saksena, Anu Selvaraj, Mihir Sharma, Anjali Sheth, Rani Sheth, Alexander Shing, Anthony Shing, Neal Sidhu, Arun Sundaresan, Larissa Tyagi, Smriti Vaidyanathan, Joshua Valluru, Ramanand Vegesna, Katelyn Vo, Jessie Wang, Henry Wiese, Alicia Xu, Catherine Zhao and Joshua Zhou.
Altogether, Harker’s National Merit semifinalists and commended students comprise 68% of the Class of 2020!
Harker journalism students spent Nov. 19-23 in Washington, D.C., attending the Journalism Education Association and National Scholastic Press Association’s Fall High School Journalism Convention, where the Winged Post newspaper received an NSPA Pacemaker award.
The upper school’s Winged Post newspaper was awarded the Pacemaker for the 2018-19 school year, which was the third Pacemaker in journalism department history, following a 2016 win for the upper school news website, Aquila, and the Winged Post’s first Pacemaker win in 2008. The Winged Post was one of just 19 school publications chosen from among 220 finalists. Aquila was awarded sixth place in Best of Show in the Website category.
Individual awards included an honorable mention for Social Justice Reporting for senior Mahika Halepete’s story on the refugee crisis, and another honorable mention in Local Climate Change Reporting for a story covering the Green New Deal by juniors Arya Maheshwari, Varsha Rammohan and Michael Eng, and sophomore Lucy Ge.
Honorable mentions were also won for 2019 Digital Story of the Year for coverage of the California Democratic Convention by seniors Eric Fang and Kathy Fang, and juniors Arushi Saxena and Anna Vazhaeparambil, and a story by Kathy Fang and senior Jessie Wang on biology teacher Thomas Artiss’ beekeeping hobby.
As a top 10 finalist in this year’s 3M Young Scientist Challenge, eighth grader Reshma Kosaraju is eligible to win the Improving Lives Award, which is given to the project that the public believes to be the most beneficial. Voting is now open, and visitors can vote for their favorite project once a day until Oct. 25 at 5 p.m. eastern time.
June 26, 2019:
Yesterday, rising eighth grader Reshma Kosaraju was named one of the top 10 national finalists in the 2019 3M Young Scientist Challenge. Her project investigated how machine learning and neural networks could be used to predict and prevent forest fires. Each student participating in the competition submitted a video about a solution they devised for a common problem. As a finalist, Kosaraju has earned the opportunity to enter a special mentorship program, in which she will work with a 3M scientist to create a prototype of her project. She also is eligible to participate in the final competition, which will take place in late October at the 3M Innovation Center in St. Paul, Minn. The grand prize winner will receive $25,000.
Three women from Harker were honored by the Davidson Institute in its annual awards. Natasha Maniar ’19 and Cynthia Chen, grade 12, were named 2019 Davidson Fellow Laureates, while Ruhi Sayana ’19 received an honorable mention. Maniar’s award is in the technology category, while Chen’s and Sayana’s awards are in the science category. The two fellows each will receive a $50,000 scholarship and a trip to Washington, D.C., to receive their awards.
Chen’s project is titled “Decoding Neural Networks: Novel Computational Methods to Discover Anti-Tumor B Cell Receptor Binding Motifs.” Her Davidson summary reads: “Cynthia’s study is the first to provide a framework for interpreting the motif patterns learned by deep learning models trained on protein sequence data. Deep neural networks have achieved great success in diagnosing diseases, but they remain black boxes: scientists are often unable to clearly explain how a model arrives at its decision or which features matter most. To address this, Cynthia developed computational methods to uncover the patterns learned by a deep neural network that predicts cancer types based on B cell receptor (BCR) sequences. By decoding this model, she identified and validated 65 tumor-specific BCR binding motifs for 13 cancer types, a discovery that could guide future synthesis of antibody drugs for targeted cancer treatments.” Read more about Chen’s efforts here.
Maniar’s project is titled “MapAF: Deep Learning to Improve Therapy of Complex Human Heart Rhythm Abnormalities” and, according to the Davidson site, she has “developed a computational approach to identify sources of atrial fibrillation (AF). Despite affecting more than 33 million people worldwide, diagnostic imaging of electrical conduction through the heart remains relatively subjective and continues to rely heavily on visual interpretation by experts. Natasha addressed this as a two-fold problem. She first developed an algorithm to analyze the heart’s chaotic electrical signals and then interpreted those results using her computational tool. Her code identified the AF sources inside the heart with greater accuracy than trained experts. This tool improves AF treatment by streamlining and standardizing the catheter ablation procedure, making it globally accessible.” Read more about Maniar here.
Sayana’s project, titled “Precision Care for Leukemia: Discovery of Novel Therapeutics for High-Risk ALL via Epigenetic and Computational Transcriptome Profiling,” already earned her one of the 40 finalist slots in the Regeneron Science Talent Search in early 2019. Maniar also was a finalist. In addition, Sayana was a grand prize winner in the Synopsys Silicon Valley Science and Technology Championship, held in March. Chen was also a grand prize winner. Last but not least, Sayana earned a $10,000 scholarship as an Intel Foundation Young Scientist from the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. Read more about Sayana here and search the names of all three at news.harker.org to see the many science prizes these exceptional women have earned in their budding careers!
The theme of the 2019 National Junior Classical League Convention was “apes non sunt solitaria natura” (“Bees are not of a solitary nature”). Harker students participating as members of the California delegation were certainly as busy as bees, attending workshops and contest sessions, assemblies and sporting events. In addition to helping California take the top place in the spirit competition for medium-size delegations, the students brought home the following top 10 places. (Note: Students compete at the grade and Latin level they just completed in June.)
Felix Chen, grade 6, Level 1/2:
2nd in Ancient Geography, Greek Life and Literature, Roman History
3rd in Classical Art, Hellenic History, Latin Literature, Mythology
4th in Latin Derivatives, Reading Comprehension
5th in Academic Heptathlon
6th in Mottoes, Roman Life
7th in Greek Derivatives
8th in Latin Grammar
9th in Latin Vocabulary, Overall Academics
Felix also played on the California Novice Certamen (quiz bowl) team, which placed seventh.
Tiffany Chang, grade 8, Level 2:
4th in Reading Comprehension
5th in Sight Latin Reading
9th in Latin Literature, Mottoes
10th in Classical Greek, Essay
Tiffany played on the third-place Open Certamen Intermediate team.
(Note: Open Certamen teams are made of players from various states.)
Rupert Chen, grade 8, Level 2:
2nd in Sight Latin Reading
3rd in Reading Comprehension
5th in Essay
6th in Greek Life and Literature
Rupert played on the third-place Open Certamen Advanced team.
Michelle Jin, grade 8, Level 2:
2nd in Latin Literature
4th in Mottoes, Sight Latin Reading
6th in Classical Art, Reading Comprehension
8th in Essay
Lauren Liu, grade 8, Level 2:
4th in Reading Comprehension
8th in Essay
Edward Sun, grade 8, Level 2:
6th in Reading Comprehension
Jeffrey Fung, grade 11, Level 5+:
2nd in Reading Comprehension Prose, Sight Latin Reading (Poetry)
3rd in Reading Comprehension Poetry
4th in Ancient Geography, Classical Art, Greek Life and Literature
5th in Latin Literature, Latin Vocabulary, Mottoes, Roman Life, 100 Meters Senior Boys Track
6th in Classical Greek, Hellenic History, Mythology
8th in Latin Grammar
9th in Academic Heptathlon, Roman History
10th in Greek Derivatives
Jeffrey also played on the California Advanced Certamen (quiz bowl) team, which placed eighth.
Kyle Li, grade 11, Level 5+:
2nd in Hellenic History
3rd in Classical Greek
5th in Greek Life and Literature, Mythology
6th in Reading Comprehension Prose
7th in Reading Comprehension Poetry
9th in Greek Derivatives