Seventeen high school students in the Washoe County School District (WCSD) are semifinalists in the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program. These students are among more than 16,000 scholars nationwide competing for $26 million in college scholarships to be awarded next spring.
The semifinalists from WCSD represent eight high schools across the district. Reno High School had six semifinalists, followed by two each from TMCC High School, Spanish Springs High School, Galena High School and Damonte Ranch High School. Hug High School, Wooster High School and McQueen High School each have one semifinalist.
The semifinalists are:
- Jaidev Commuri, Hug High School
- Nicholas Cote, TMCC High School
- Maxwell Harper, Reno High School
- Kayden King, Reno High School
- Amabel Lewis, Wooster High School
- Aine McGloin, TMCC High School
- Travis Nichols, Spanish Springs High School
- Kyle Parker, McQueen High School
- Martin Peralta, Reno High School
- Stone Rasmussen, Galena High School
- Jaxon Reddig, Spanish Springs High School
- Carter Rockwell, Galena High School
- Colin Schiff, Reno High School
- Cruz Smith, Reno High School
- Justin Solimine, Damonte Ranch High School
- Brendan Zankowski, Damonte Ranch High School
- Andrew Zhang, Reno High School
These students are part of a pool of more than 1.3 million juniors from about 21,000 high schools nationwide that entered the program. They took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as an initial screening.
The nationwide pool of semifinalists represents less than 1 percent of U.S. high school seniors and includes the highest-scoring entrants in each state.
The National Merit Scholarship Corporation will select about 15,000 finalists, notifying them in February 2025. These finalists will compete for 2,500 National Merit Scholarships worth $2,500 each, about 770 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarships and approximately 3,600 college-sponsored Merit Scholarships.
Source: WCSD
