Students named Merit Scholar semifinalists

A new crop of National Merit Scholarship semifinalists has been chosen from this year's new senior class.

These students can now vie to become finalists and qualify for thousands of dollars in financial awards for college. Area semifinalists and their schools are:

• Barrington: Benjamin Altshuler, Aleksander Bapst, William Chan, Lela DiMonte, George Farrell, Michelle Grube, Megan Karande, Brandon Kleinvehn, David Lilien, Sasidhar Madugula, David Martin, Sam Martin, John Rosenberg, Justin Yu.

• Bartlett: Jacob Clementi, Carlos Moncada.

• Buffalo Grove: Melanie Driscoll, Nadia Vinogradova, Jordan Weiner, Huijie Yang.

• Conant: Jared Bauman, Eileen Chong, Megan Hodgson, Krishnabhai Patel.

• Fremd: Brian Cho, Elizabeth Holmberg, Grace Hoo, Chaitra Kishore, Robert Kramer, Michelle Lundholm, Maxwell Meigel, Meghan Morrison, Rachael Palumbo, Tyler Petersen, Sahana Rao, Matthew Schuelke, Henry Shin, Jessica Tackett, Gregory Tourville, Helena Yu, Maggie Zhang.

• Hersey: Peter O'Banion.

• Hoffman Estates: Nicole Platteuw.

• Lake Park: Joelle Jach, Daniel Peel, Sean Tolrud.

• Palatine: Elizabeth Jump, Sara-Clare McGeever, Anna Novikova, Eric Rodriguez, James Silveira, Shruthi Venkatesh, Feiyu Xue.

• Prospect: Justyna Bicz, Jaclyn French, Caroline Hughes, Matt Kania, Heidi Nafis, Lauren Pellant, Maxwell Youngquist.

• Schaumburg: Karalyn Chen, Kevin Chen, Usman Iobal, Amanda Rooney, Emily VanderBleek.

• Stevenson: Rachel An, Tyler Bartlow, Ben Beutel, Lin Bo, Laurence Brouillette, Zachary Epstein, Kexin Fang, Timothy Han, Scott Hong, Nikita Ikon, Alexei Iouchkov, Namrata Kodali, Keli Liu, Matthew Nichols, Zhihong Oiu, Veronika Pashkina, Michelle Ran, Jonathan Safron, Leah Schmelkin, Choong-Hwa Shin, Henry Wood, Donald Yang, Fangzhou Yu, Alexandra Zarecky, Tony Zhang.

• Wheeling: Claire Christensen, Lauren Linzmeier, Benjamin Marcus, Sanjit Shah, Darcy Zaretzky.

• Willows Academy: Anna O'Neill, Julia Ronczy.