Sept. 30, 2019 - Congratulations to the 32 Duval County Public Schools students -- representing Douglas Anderson, Mandarin, Paxon, and Stanton high schools -- who are among 16,000 Semifinalists selected for the 65th annual National Merit Scholarship Program.

These academically gifted high school seniors will now have an opportunity to compete for about 7,600 National Merit Scholarships worth more than $31 million dollars.

The students were selected from approximately 1.5 million high school juniors who entered the 2020 scholarship program by taking the 2018 Preliminary SAT/ National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. This test serves as an initial screen of program entrants.

The next round in the competition is the Finalist stage. To become a Finalist, the students must submit an application detailing information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment, and honors and awards.

Finalists will be notified in February 2020, with the winners of the scholarships to be announced beginning in April 2020.

Congratulations to all of the students. The list of semifinalists is below:

Douglas Anderson School of the Arts:

Agonoy, Adam X.

Pabon, Samuel A.

Sievert, Mallorie C.

Mandarin High School:

Ellis, Lauren E.

Joseph, Princeton B.

Paxon School for Advanced Studies:

Connor, Aaron

Kathiravan, Nandhini

Stanton College Preparatory School:

Boyd, Stephen W.

Chiang, Brian J.

Conrad, Kaylee

Gupta, Aryan

Gupta, Monica

Imam, Arhum S.

Kopparthi, Sri M.

Kummeta, Shirsika R.

Leimer, Caleb

Lopez, Andrew P.

McCoy, Richard W.

McFarland, Craig W.

Nocom, Kylo J.

Nguyen, Kevin T.

Patel, Rajan H.

Peck, Caroline M

Penland, Sarah G.

Riazati, Raha

Sarab, Makenna N.

Sheldon, Jenna D.

Simmons, Kate E.

Stevens, Katherine E.

Valan, Joshua

Venkata, Ronak N.

Wang, Jeannie K.