The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC®) recently released the names of the 71st annual National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists who have been officially named finalists.

This year’s National Merit finalists from the Bolles Class of 2026 are Jayan Deshmukh ’26, Ioannis Economidis ’26, Victoria Edgar ’26, Sameera Ghate ’26, Zachary Gratz ’26, Nishta Jijosh ’26, Charlotte Joseph ’26, Esha Kasavaraju ’26, Akhil Ketty ’26, Jay Manohar ’26, Jack Pearson ’26, Nikhil Reddy ’26 and Arnav Shah ’26.

The finalists now continue in competition for some 6,930 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered this spring. More than 1.3 million juniors from about 20,000 high schools around the country entered the 2026 scholarship program by taking the 2024 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, also known as the PSAT/NMSQT®. That test served as an initial screen of program entrants.

To become a finalist, semifinalists submitted a detailed scholarship application, in which they provided information about their academic record, participation in school and community activities, demonstrated leadership abilities, employment and honors and awards received. They were required to have an outstanding academic record throughout high school, be endorsed and recommended by a high school official, write an essay and earn SAT® or ACT® scores that confirmed the student’s earlier performance on the qualifying test. #BulldogProud