Rockwood Students Earn 2026 National Merit $2500 Scholarships

Recent Lafayette High graduates Abhi Boga and Vedanth Chimakurthy and Marquette High graduate Satvik Seetharaman are among this year’s National Merit $2500 Scholarship winners.

These 2,500 Merit Scholar designees were chosen from a talent pool of more than 15,000 outstanding finalists in the 2026 National Merit Scholarship Program. National Merit $2500 Scholarship winners are the finalists in each state judged to have the strongest combination of accomplishments, skills and potential for success in rigorous college studies. Rockwood’s honorees are among only 40 $2500 Scholarship winners from the state of Missouri.

These scholars were selected by a committee of college admissions officers and high school counselors, who appraised a substantial amount of information submitted by both the finalists and their high schools: the academic record, including difficulty level of subjects studied and grades earned; scores from the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®); contributions and leadership in school and community activities; an essay written by the finalist; and a recommendation written by a high school official.

Along with two corporate-sponsored awardees, five recent Rockwood graduates have now earned 2026 National Merit Scholarships. On June 3 and July 13, around  3,500 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship winners will be announced. By the conclusion of this year’s competition, around 6,700 students will have won National Merit Scholarships worth approximately $24 million.

Congratulations to these outstanding Rockwood graduates!

Abhi Boga, Lafayette

Boga will be attending the Honors College at the University of Missouri-Columbia and plans to major in biology on a pre-med track.

Vedanth Chimakurthy, Lafayette

Chimakurthy plans to pursue his passion for rockets and planes by majoring in aerospace engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Satvik Seetharaman, Marquette

Seetharaman will attend Rice University in Houston, Texas, and study computational and applied mathematics.