ALACHUA COUNTY, FL (352today.com) – Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) has announced that 21 seniors have been named semifinalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship program.
This honor, awarded by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, highlights their outstanding academic performance. The competition was tough this year, with fewer than 1% of high school seniors across the country achieving this recognition.
The path to becoming a semifinalist started with about 1.3 million students who took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test in their junior year. From this large group, only 16,000 students stood out enough to earn semifinalist status due to their outstanding test scores.
These semifinalists are close to becoming finalists. They must go through a tough evaluation process. In addition to their impressive SAT scores, they need to submit a detailed application that highlights their academic achievements, awards, leadership experiences, teacher recommendations, and a strong essay that reflects their goals and successes.
There are five semifinalists at Buchholz High, six at Eastside High and ten at Gainesville High. They are:
Buchholz High School: Charles Austin, Andrew Caruso, Stuart Ding, Adrian Palamarev, and Emily Zhou.
Eastside High School: Aagneya Banerjee, Henry Bostock, Joyce Huang, Yihan Wang, Chloe Zheng and Kyle Ziegler.
Gainesville High School: Elizabeth Chapman, Nathan Collier, Ava Fuller, Yoo-Min Koh, Kareem Meinel, Charlotte Shea, Aiden Swallow, William Thomas, Kallum Wang, and Mathilde Wuthrich.