61 LWSD students named National Merit Semifinalists

Redmond, Wash. – Sixty-one Lake Washington School District (LWSD) high school seniors have been named semifinalists in the 72nd annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation announced the semifinalists on Wednesday, September 9.

Sixteen thousand high school seniors nationwide qualified. More than 15,000 semifinalists are expected to advance to the Finalist level. Approximately half will win a National Merit Scholarship. These students will be able to continue in the competition for about 6,700 National Merit Scholarships, worth nearly $24 million.

Students qualified for these awards by completing the 2025 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. The semifinalists include the highest-scoring students in each state. The semifinalists represent less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors.

Lake Washington School District National Merit Semifinalists*:

Eastlake High School

• Brinda Aniga
• Mason Beckstead
• Daphne Carroll
• Liam Holzer
• Sarah Lei
• Ryan Patterson
• Maanya Ramanujan
• Ramiru Ranasingha
• Prahalad Talur
• Luke Tan
• Saket Toshniwal
• Vivian Xie

International Community School

• Macy Keating
• Grace Yu

Juanita High School

• Taras Abakumov
• Finlay Bould
• Franklin Chen
• Brendon Luo
• Vijay Patankar
• Ruiyi Tao
• Caroline Zhu

Lake Washington High School

• Tayla Chang
• Isabella Guan
• Naina Jayaswal
• Karan Khanolkar
• Jay Song
• Tanvi Varangaonkar
• Ayaan Yadav

Redmond High School

• Beverly A. Bialke
• Sidhanth Chakravarthy
• Stephanie Y. Chen
• Nicole Z. Cheng
• Sri Sahasra Kandula
• Aditi Karthikeyan
• Akash Krothapalli
• Emma Li
• Emily Ma
• Nova Marcroft
• Katie H. Phan
• Anshul Raghav
• Anvitha G. Sagiraju
• Sarah Samanta
• Ella C. Su
• Aria K. Szlagor
• Fiona Z. Xian
• Stephen Zhou

Nikola Tesla STEM High School

• Jai Bindlish
• Shaurya Gupta
• Isabel S. Kaempfer
• Preetika Kaur
• Aashrith Pisupati
• Shipra Prajapati
• Anindita Purkayastha
• Karthik K. Rajagopal
• Ender M. Ramsby
• Rowe D. Saiz
• Shreya S. Santhosh
• Anisha N. Upasani
• Max D. Xie
• Leo Yang
• Yilin Zhang

* Note: Photos available on request.

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About Lake Washington: Lake Washington School District is a high-performing public school district serving Kirkland Redmond and Sammamish Washington. It is the second largest district in the state of Washington with nearly 30,000 students in 55 schools.