Fifty FBISD 2011 National Merit Finalists Named

FORT BEND ISD – The Fort Bend Independent School District is proud to announce the names of 50 FBISD students who have been named finalists in the 2011 National Merit Scholarship Program. To put that number in perspective, Fort Bend ISD has one of the highest percentages of National Merit Semifinalists among the larger school districts in Texas.

The 50 FBISD students are among 15,000 Semifinalists notified by mail at their home addresses who have advanced to Finalist standing. The nationwide pool of Semifinalists represents less than one percent of U.S. high school seniors, includes the highest scoring entrants in each state. The number of Finalists varies each year according to the allocation for the state that is designated by the National Merit Corporation.

Fort Bend ISD's 2011 National Merit Finalists by campus are:

Austin High School – Pallavi Bakshi, Rachel Hatton, Brian Lisco, Swaroop Rao, and Nakul Shah;
Clements High School – Sara Ahmed, Smarath Asthana, Anik Bhattacharya, Warren Chan, Kevin Chen, Darren Chiu, Matthew Dierker, Nikhil Dixit, Richard Fang, Kevin Feng, Dev Gandhi, Xuan Gao, Vivian Ho, Jia-Ching Hsu, Phillip Hu, Adelia Humme, Jaclyn Kachelmeyer, Nathan Kwan, Kevin Lin, Sirui Lu, Kritaarth Mahankali, Priyanka Mehta, Minesh Patel, Victoria Pham, Karthik Sethuraman, Millie Shi, Connie Wang, Jia Xin Wang, Katherine Yun, Rose Zhang and Yuxi Zhou;
Dulles High School – Julia Chang and Aaras Shah;
Elkins High School – Eileen Gong, Richard Haines, Connie Wang and Grant Yuan;
Hightower High School – Steven Dao and Neel Patel;
Kempner High School – Shuoyang Zhu, and;
Travis High School – Hersh Agrawal, Julie Gerzina, Nikita Kansra, Gaurav Nayak and Shrinidhi Rao.

All winners of Merit Scholarship^® awards (Merit Scholar^® designees) are chosen from the Finalist group, based on their abilities, skills, and accomplishments–without regard to gender, race, ethnic origin, or religious preference. The National Merit Scholarship Corp. selectors evaluate: the Finalist's academic record, information about the school's curricula and grading system, two sets of test scores, the high school official's written recommendation, information about the student's activities and leadership, and the Finalist's own essay.

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