Thirty-eight seniors recently learned they are National Merit semifinalists. The previous record was 51 Semifinalists in the Class of 2020; the Class of 2021 had 30.

The National Merit Program recognizes top students based on their junior year PSAT score. To qualify as a semifinalist, a student must score in the 99th percentile of their state, amounting to just 2,100 of the 293,988 seniors in California who took the 2020 exam. 

As confirmed by websites like PrepExpert and Compass Prep, California’s cutoff score this year was 221 (which roughly translates to a 1,480). 

The Class of 2022 National Merit Semifinalists are Naisha Agarwal, Vicky Bai, Aeshon Balasubramanian, Andy Chen, Karen Chen, Selina Chen, Emma Chu, Aidan Costello, Ethan Cotta, Ishanya Hebbalae, Howard Huang, Daniel Jiang, Byron Jin, Madelyn Jin, Marcus Kuo, Kian Kwa, Ryan Lee, Nicole Lu, Esther Luan, Adithya Peruvemba, Shravan Potluri, Vignav Ramesh, Jennifer Sheng, Aahaan Singh, Sanjana Somayajula, Kavita Sundaram, Arjun Walia, Tiffany Wang, Lance Wong, Cheryl Wu, Christopher Wu, Albert Ye, Anouk Yeh, William Yuan, Yousuf Zaman, Joseph Zhang and Peilin Zhang.