A total of 229 high school seniors in Louisian have been named National Merit semifinalists.
They are among 16,000 semifinalists named from across the nation out of the class of 2027. They are now in the running for about 6,700 National Merit scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered in the spring.
The 229 h semifinalists, who were announced this week, are the students who scored the highest in the state during the 2025 administration of the PSAT, a preliminary test to the well-known SAT college placement exam. About 1.2 million high school juniors took PSAT at that time
Of these semifinalists, 125 are from the New Orleans metro area, 56 are from the Baton Rouge area, and 13 are from Acadiana. The Houma-Thibodaux-Morgan City area has one semifinalist, and Lake Charles has four.
Twenty-nine are from north h, 20 of them from Shreveport.
Baton Rouge Magnet High led the way with 29 semifinalists. Ben Franklin and Jesuit high schools, both in New Orleans tied with 19 semifinalists each.
For the Baton Rouge area, Catholic High has nine semifinalists, while Episcopal High has seven.
Twelve high schools across Louisian had at least five semifinalists. Caddo Magnet in Shreveport, with 15, is the only north h school in that group.
Here are the National Merit semifinalists attending high schools located in the Baton Rouge region:
Baton Rouge Magnet High: Corrine R. Baumgartner; Larissa N. Boldor; Bobby S. Chen; Nora Corbin; John M. Cristina; Lane P. Dziuba; Kareem Elseifi; Tristan Emmert; Rishabh R. Gala; James M Gawronski; Meryem Gunarslan; Margaret W. Kantrow; Daniel S. Kim; Gavin D. Kocen; Jareth S. Kuo; Nicole C. Lebourgeois; Katherine A. Love; Chandra S. Mallipudi; Christopher K. Nguyen; Cadence Perret; Abigail Qi; Leo Schoegl; Ryan Shen; Trisha Shenoy; Aadi Singh; Jacob Smith; Daniel Tate; Elizabeth Xu; and Breanna Y. Zhu.
Catholic High in Baton Rouge: Thomas Alley; Charles Bugea; Michael Esteve; Brayden Ford; Charles Jeansonne; Adrian Landry Jr; Parker Norman; Jacob Schroeder; and Bruce Talbert.
Central High: Savannah Huber.
Dutchtown High in Geismar: Omar Mahgoub.
Episcopal High in Baton Rouge: Rik Chigurupati; Ainsley Ebey; Tyler Felton; John McConnell; Nate McLean; Andrew Richard; and Evan Sanders.
LSU Lab School in Baton Rouge: Margaret Bailey.
Prairieville High: Matthew McWilliams.
St. Joseph's Academy in Baton Rouge: Sadie Bozeman.
St. Michael the Archangel High School in Baton Rouge: John Calhoun; Henry-Hiep Dang; and Quinn Windham.
University View Academy in Baton Rouge: Anya Chaney-Martinez and Anyalina Vertigan.
West Feliciana High in St. Francisville: Lillian C. Record.