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Fairfax County Public Schools has 244 students from 18 schools among the 2026 National Merit Scholarship finalists, placing them in contention for thousands of scholarships to be awarded this spring.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which also serves as Northern Virginia’s Governor’s Regional School, accounts for 105 of the district’s finalists.
The updated total follows the correction of a clerical error that caused some students to be omitted from an earlier list.
Nationwide, more than 15,000 high school seniors were named finalists. They may compete for 6,930 National Merit Scholarship awards valued at nearly $26 million.
Finalists advanced from the semifinalist pool by satisfying academic and other requirements, including receiving a recommendation from a high school official.
Fairfax County’s 2026 finalists are:
Centreville High School: Daniel Ahn, Kareem Aly, Isabel Jung, Sean Kim, Seo Yun Noh, Madelyn Regan, Phillip Tran.
Chantilly High School: Carrie Chia, Hee Theng Chong, Rahul Dham, Lillian Fry, Abhiram Gaddam, Hansika Gautama, Xavier Lewandowski, Kyle Li, Sahas Manchireddy, Jishnav Raj, Brian Son, Srimayi Sriram, Shivam Suri, Anna Tung, Jonathan Wang, Haorui Zhao.
Edison High School: Malyha Bashar, Zoe Stanfield.
Fairfax High School: Rohan Desai, Elias Falke, Henry Mann, Michael Stechl, Nathan Yoon.
Falls Church High School: Jayden Nguyen.
Herndon High School: Nina Whale.
Lake Braddock Secondary School: Jack Doan, Vincent LaNave, Manas Puri, Sarah Roelke, Ronald Zhang.
Langley High School: Oscar Anderson, Varun Bazaz, Abigail Davis, Michaela Frey, Matthew Han, Jarod Jiang, Eesha Kaushik, Yann Lam, Milan Le, Davanee Li, Michael Li, Sophie Li, Elizabeth Maclay, Elliot Pomper, Risha Potluri, Paige Poulos, Syed Rishad, Aakriti Rustagi, Kailash Sastry, Dylan Thomas, Chenchang Zhang.
Madison High School: Sahana Aravind, Liana Carr, Asha Jha, Margaret Kisner, Thomas Santonicola, Sara Yoshikawa, Tianxing Zhang, Andrew Zi.
Marshall High School: Anna Bae, Nicholas Dierbeck, Alexander Duff, Jordan Gee, Nathaniel Ni, Karen Owens, Ayesha Piracha, Sulaiman Piracha, Eloise Quan, Gavril Tefferi, Timothy Tu, David Wang, Yixiang Wang.
McLean High School: Atticus Cheng, Julie Daniel, Joseph Daniels, Clement Ding, Annie Gao, Daniel Kim, Atul Kotamraju, Maximilian Lee, Nicholas Lee, Kyle Li, Edward Lin, Livia Nhan, Ravi Reddy, Alan Tang, Alan Wang, Pengmu Wang, Kalan Warusa, Tobin Wilson, Alicia Yau.
Oakton High School: Ronav Akella, Jovina Arulandu, Kurshat Bilgin, Sophie Burrell, Aaron Chen, Anna Chen, Ashley Chen, Kevin Geng, Caitlin Houston, Chunjie Huang, Linus Koepcke, Daniel Lee, Natalie Leong, Sihe Liu, Yuting Liu, Vishal Manikanden, Sibel Mehmed, Matthew Negron, Arnav Sharma, Ryan Shin, Shawn Wu, Albert Xu, Claire Zhang.
South Lakes High School: Ayush Tripathy.
Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology: Anusha Agarwal, Jacqueline Ake, Grace Amartuvshin, Rishi Anangi, Navya Arora, Romanchit Arora, Sugirthan Nagappan Arun, Grace Bai, Ananya Bhatt, Hrishi Bhooma, Sai Pratik Buddhana, Evan Cafaro, Jessica Chen, Joshua Cheng, Ariana Chidambar, Moira Clark, Rachel Du, Nikolas Fitzpatrick, Joseph George, Ria Goel, Finley Gordon, Haasini Govindu, Breanne Graham, Eric Guo, Sophia Guo, Harry Han, Tayne Han, Ibrahim Harchich, Kaleb Hickling, Rohan Honganoor, Holly Huang, Kyungsup Hwang, Theodore Hwang, Shaanvhi Jayaram, Soren Johnson, Kashi Kamat, Aarushi Kanigicherla, Matthew Kao, Nathaniel Kerr, Justin Kim, Karis Kim, Petr Kisselev, Ethan Ko, Anant Krishna, Rushil Kukreja, Divya Kulkarni, Valerie Lai, Ethan Lee, Hanseon Lee, Brendan Li, Caroline Li, Ethan Li, Nathan Liu, Nikita Lugovoy, Justin Ma, Bowen MacGillivray, Ansh Malhotra, Zella Mantler, Payton Morris, Nived Nandakumar, Rishikesh Narayana, Kavin Narayanan, Noam Nikolich, Elijah O’Donoghue, Ethan O’Hara, Viola Pande, Anna Park, Joey Park, Aashritha Penumudi, Quynh-Chi Phan, Juliet Phillips, Bailey Piper, Matthew Ryan, Hannah Ryu, Karanveer Sadiora, Ahana Sekhar, Grace Shaffer, Siwen Shen, Julia Shi, Julia Showers, Emilia Sloan, Abeni Smith, Micah Sorli, Grace Sprano, Sophia Stidman, Henry Stievater, Joseph Sultan, Alaina Szeto, Abhiraj Tiwari, Sarah Trainer, Rachel Truong, Luv Udeshi, Tanush Vuppala, Oliver Wang, Ruilin Wang, Aidan Wright, Olivia Wu, Eric Xie, Jayden Yang, Justin Yu, Ayla Zhang, Ella Zhang, Feiran Zhang, Jennifer Zhang, Max Zhao.
West Potomac High School: Shaan Nagda.
West Springfield High School: Timothy Campbell, Kennedy Leary.
Westfield High School: Aurel Catherine Arockia Irudhaya Jayasingh, Liam Danner, Rebecca Ewell, Manojna Kandlagunta, Salban Nithilaselvan, Jaeden Pangaribuan.
Woodson High School: Kavya Balachandar, Aiden Brennan, Ethan Lee, Alexander Liu, James Ngo, Ada Qin, James Stansbery, Noah Yen-Goossens.
More than 1.3 million juniors entered the 2025 National Merit program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test, the program’s initial screening exam.
The 2026 awards consist of $2,500 National Merit Scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships and college-sponsored scholarships. Winners will begin to be announced in April.