Sixteen Alachua County Public School seniors have earned prestigious semifinalist status in the 2026 National Merit Scholarship program, according to a list released this week by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, which administers the program. Fewer than 1% of current high school seniors earned that status this year.
About 1.3 million students took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors during the last school year, with 16,000 earning semifinalist status based on their performance on that exam.
All of the semi-finalists now have the opportunity to earn finalist status. In addition to earning high scores on the SAT, they will have to submit applications highlighting their other academic achievements, awards and honors earned, leadership activities, teacher recommendations and an essay.
There are five semifinalists at Buchholz High School, five at Gainesville High School, four at Eastside High School and one each at Santa Fe High School and the Professional Academies Magnet at Loften High School. They are:
Buchholz High School: Annika Caedington, Pranay Gadikota, Shailey Karri, Evan Rotchford and Keith Zheng;
Eastside High School: Francheska Melendez, Irma Rahman, Juhyung Seong and Miles Smith;
Gainesville High School: Rowan Archer, Lina Dos Santos, Madeleine Goodrich, Irma Impink and Elizabeth Rant;
Professional Academies Magnet at Loften High School: Logan Rockwell;
Santa Fe High School: Robert Hu