Eighty-three LWSD students named National Merit Finalists

Redmond, Wash. – Congratulations to Lake Washington School District’s 83 seniors who were recently named National Merit finalists. These students are among the 15,000 students from across the country now being considered for a number of National Merit scholarships. These high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for nearly 6,870 National Merit Scholarships, worth nearly $26 million that will be offered in the spring. 

High school students entered the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program, its 71st annual, by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants.

Three types of National Merit Scholarships will be offered in the spring of 2026. Every Finalist will compete for one of 2,500 National Merit® $2500 Scholarships that will be awarded on a state-representational basis. About 830 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 150 corporations and business organizations for Finalists who meet their specified criteria. In addition, about 150 colleges and universities are expected to finance some 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for Finalists who will attend the sponsor institution. National Merit Scholarship winners of 2026 will be announced beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join more than 389,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title.

To learn more, visit National Merit Scholarship Corporation’s website.

Lake Washington School District National Merit Finalists*:

Eastlake High School

• Saranya Agrawal
• Devi Anand
• Bradshaw Asher
• Tavas Bharadwaj
• Niharika Dinesh
• Gary Fu
• Aishwarya Kota
• Vihitha Kumar
• Dhruv P Kurup
• Jade Lam
• Ryan Li
• Brooke Lin
• Angelina Lu
• Sunehri Nog
• Neil Rawal
• Dana Satimova
• Medha S Singitham
• Srivatsa Sistla
• Karthik Sivakumar
• Zenith Tang
• Aarush Thadani
• Pranav Tripathi
• Rohit Venkatesan
• Madhoha Yellamareddygari
• Siddharth Yenamandra
• Kevin Yu
• Yuanrui Zhao    

Redmond High School

• Sihan Chen
• Theodore Chen
• Ameera Galeeb
• Sophia Hsu
• Ann Joby
• Sirjana Kaur
• Erin Kaye
• Aditya Kumar
• Isabella Li
• Ali Macky
• Rohan Singh Malhi
• Swetha Mandaleeka
• Dhruv Mittal
• Anahadh Multani
• Siri C. Mutalik Desai
• Pranith Nagarajan
• Anya Nanda
• Kimberly Ong
• Hiya Pandey
• Adarsh Prasad
• Barrett Rugge
• Shreya Sharma
• Arnav Shrestha
• Suhani Singh
• Darshika Vaideeswaran
• Baohui Wang
• Julia Yuzhu Wen
• Catherine Xie
• Ella Xu
• Grace Zhang

International Community School

• Deniz Caglar
• Daniel Zhang

Tesla STEM High School

• Ryan Chhabra
• Kaushal Dabbiru
• Inesh Dey
• Aakash Ghosh
• Anika Joshi
• Shriya Kapila
• Arnav Mittal
• Naman Mutalik Desai
• Mehuli Nath
• Neil Parikh
• Tanmay Sarvepalli
• Sathkrith Segu
• Thea Sima
• Madeleine Vanderheiden
• Kedar Venkatachalam
• Leo Wang
• Sarah Youn
• Sophie Zhao

Lake Washington High School

• Vaughn Morton
• Vi Twyman
• Elias Lafornara
• Arron Randhawa
• Eunjae Jeon

Juanita High School

• Deepali Honavalli

* 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 over 30,000 students in 55 schools.