Over 150 Local Students Named National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalists

By Thomas Nothel

Over 150 Students attending High Schools on the North Shore of Long Island have been named a 2025 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist.

This is a rare achievement and a prestigious recognition. It is determined by the students' top PSAT scores from their junior year.

The students are now eligible to continue in the competition to be named a 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program Finalist.

The 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program Scholars are competing for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth a total of $26 million.  The competition will continue through the spring of 2025.

There are over 1.3 million initial entrants in the National Merit Scholarship Program, from which only about 16,000 students nationwide - are designated as Semifinalists.

The PSAT scores of students who met program participation requirements were used to designate a pool of more than 16,000 Semifinalists on a state allocation basis.

Semifinalists are the highest scorers in each of the 50 states and represent less than one percent of each state’s high school seniors.

Below is the list of local Students named a Semifinalist:

Cold Spring Harbor High School

Ava Coco; Milan Lustig; Stephen Schmidt; Aidan Smith

Glen Head - North Shore High School

Seamus Hughes; Raymond Lin; Wenqi Xiao

Locust Valley High School

Giovanni Gambino

Oyster Bay High School

Brandon Antonetti; Adrian Kim

Great Neck South High School

Luna Bae;  Christina Bai; Megan Chin-Lam Chan; Edmund Gan; Jonathan Jia  Ruiqi Liu; Paige Louie; Althea Ou; Yilin Qiao; Sarah H. Sun; William Tsang’; Evelyn Won; Erin Wong Yujin; Wu Edward Xu;Ivan Xu; Richard L. Xu; Edison Yuan; Jixuan Zhang; Laura Zhang; Zican Zhang; Kalli Zhu

Great Neck North High School

Johnathan Ahdout; Justin J. Chen; Valerie Lan;Jacob Levine; Ashley M. Liu; Aiden Maher; Dillan Palma; Daliah Segal; Lotus W. Shwe; Tamas Smulovics; Isaac Xu; Isaac Yan; Logan Z. Ye; Zachary Zar

North Shore Hebrew Academy High School

Ilana Greenberg

Hicksville High School

Kimberly Widjaja

Jericho High School

Shi-Tao Chang; Justin Chen; Ryan Cheung; Katie-Jiwoo Choi; Vishrut Goyal; Misha Gujja; Lilly Horowitz; Michael Jiao; Lisa Jin; Edeline Jung; Safir Khandaker; David Kim-Shoemaker; Michelle Liu; Samyra Mahiba; Agastya Mittal; Max Scharf; Gabrielle Shahaf; Madeline Shek; Ashlyn Thitibordin; Vincent Yang; Jerry Zhang; Leo Zhao; Lydia Zhou

Friends Academy

Terry Ye

Portledge High School

William Bodian; Kjell Goldstein

Manhasset High School

Sophia Chainan;i Hannah Chang; Jonathan Chen; Mingxin Chen; Colin Hairabedian Loic Hairabedian; Jackson Kang; Jonas Kim; Chelsea Lim; Rachel Liu; Alex Lu; Stephen Lu; Henry Ma; Peter Martelli; John Matos; Grace Punzalan; Alena Tsai; Emily Zhao

Herricks High School

Maya Aboutaleb; Afnan Ali; Shome Chakraborty; Lucy Liu; Diane Ma; Krish Maheshwari; Pratham Patel; Maximilian Peng; Kaitlyn Rams; Vidhi Shah;

New Hyde Park Memorial High School

Brice Chiu; Rachel Jacob; Clayton Yu

Port Washington - Schreiber High School

Jayden Doshi; Julian Kimball; Austin Li; Ezra Schulmiller; Brigid Southard

Roslyn High School

Ethan Berkowitz; Sarah Fernbach; Ethan J. Lee; Elaina Li; Benjamin Quadri;

Anika Tolat

Syosset High School

Derek Chen; Frank He; Marcus Hoshino; Shan Hsieh; Connor Jin; Katherine Li; Simonne Lim; Jasmine Liu; Yuyang Liu; Sunay Malhotra; Raheel Nabi; Lance Phung; Michael Ren; Corey Schack; Krishiv K. Shah; Jaysukh P. Singh; Samuel Wang; Zhaotang Wang;Joann Woo; Katherine Yi; Winston Zhou

Harborfields High School

Francis R. DeGregorio; Alexander Y. Meagher; Andrew L. Walden;

Walt Whitman High School

John Marr

St. Anthony's High School

Joseph Philip

Northport High School

Dora Fields; Michaela Tumsuden