For the 71st year, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has announced its list of semifinalists for its scholarship program. This year, more than 16,000 high school seniors were selected nationwide, including 65 students from Cobb County School District high schools.
These Cobb students now have the opportunity to compete for scholarships totaling nearly $26 million, which will be awarded next spring. The recognition includes students from Campbell, Harrison, Hillgrove, Kennesaw Mountain, Lassiter, Pope, Walton, and Wheeler high schools. According to NMSC, these semifinalists are among the highest-scoring seniors in Georgia and represent less than one percent of all seniors in the United States.
The NMSC expects about 95 percent of semifinalists to become finalists. Approximately half of those finalists will go on to receive a National Merit Scholarship and earn the title of Merit Scholar. “National Merit Scholarship winners of 2026 will be announced in four nationwide news releases beginning in April and concluding in July. These scholarship recipients will join approximately 389,000 other distinguished young people who have earned the Merit Scholar title,” according to NMSC.
The full list of Cobb County semifinalists includes:
Campbell High School: Owen Alexander, Krishna Anand, Kathrynn Benninger, Jack Herbert, Sanvi Mathan, Patil Amulya, Jacob Podolski, Gavi Surden
Harrison High School: Payton Baker, Eugene Kang, Emma Praser
Hillgrove High School: Adaku Okeh, George Wu
Kennesaw Mountain High School: Gheneruno Ekuerhare, Dheeraj Kondragunta, Mahika Mamidipalli, Everett Pounds, Sarah Sadegh, Ishaan Saini
Lassiter High School: Lucy Conway, Carter Kopp, Riley Sullivan, Alina Zhu
Pope High School: Kenneth Kim, Ishaan Marwaha, Ekansh Singh, Nyla Yarbrough
Walton High School: Aayushmann Bhattacharyya,
Anna Isabelle Cerqueira Perman,
Li-Yen Chou,
Sean J. Dalton,
Thomas Ellison,
Cole Jamison,
Maxim Le-Tu,
Jung Woo Lee,
Jacob Lembeck,
Aditya Manabala,
Aashrith Muppalla,
Benjamin Norman,
Dev Patel,
Christina Philip,
Shinjon Rafique,
Jeremiah Raj,
Ameen Sayeed,
Aubrey Seay,
Anika Thatte,
Vishruthi Thiyagarajan,
Logan Wicks,
Alena S. Wolfe-Tham,
Jerry Xu,
Anna Yang
Wheeler High School: Samuel Grouchnikov,
Maddic Jordan,
Thilo Kalbarga,
Nathan Lawson,
John Leith,
Madelyn McGurk,
Krish Patel,
Ananya Rajagopalan,
Ritvik Ranjan,
Mythili Shah,
Vidya Sinha,
Ezekiel Skeene,
Jacob Thottungal,
Dillan Vuong
