11 Berkeley Seniors Named National Merit Semifinalists—the Highest Number From Any School in Tampa Bay This Year

Eleven seniors at Berkeley Preparatory School were named National Merit Semifinalists—the highest number of Semifinalists from any public or private school in the Tampa Bay area in this, the 70th year of the National Merit Scholarship Program.

Congratulations to the following Berkeley students:

Alec Alarakhia

Natalie Dann

Michael Doyle

Zachary Haedike

Jake Hausinger

Johnathan Poisson

Michael Ross

Kyle Sakalosky

Samuel Stephens

Arjun Tummala

Riley Zophin 

Over 1.3 million juniors in about 21,000 high schools entered the 2025 National Merit Scholarship Program by taking the 2023 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. From that pool, more than 16,000 Semifinalists were chosen, and that pool represents less than 1% of U.S. high school seniors—the highest-scoring entrants in each state.

These academically talented high school seniors have an opportunity to continue in the competition for some 6,870 National Merit Scholarships worth nearly $26 million that will be offered next spring.

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) is a nonprofit that operates without government assistance and was established in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. Scholarships are underwritten by NMSC with its own funds and by approximately 280 business organizations, higher education institutions, and individual donors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring the nation’s scholastic champions and encouraging the pursuit of academic excellence.