The school released the names of its National Merit Semifinalists on Wednesday with nearly twenty students receiving the honor, the most in school history and the most in Frisco ISD this year.

“17 is the most we’ve had at Liberty High School, ever. We had 14 last year which was the previous high so we bumped that up by 3,” Principal Scott Warstler said. “I think it speaks to a couple of things. It speaks to the tremendous work ethic of our students. It speaks to high quality instruction in the classroom with out teachers, so it’s something we are very proud of. I know district wide this year we have 45 total, Liberty has 17, and the other high schools have 28 combined. It’s something we take pride in knowing that we continue to set the standard for the district in how well our students do in some of those standardized tests.”

Each of the 17 semifinalists will be eligible to advance in the National Merit Scholarship Program which gives out millions of dollars in scholarships each year. The 17 students named semifinalists are:

Karthik Dharmalingam

James Gillilan

David Hong

Ethan Kim

Arun Krishnaraj

Adarsh Melukote

Rithika Proddutoor

Raj Raikundalia

Weston Sandland

Austin Satrio

Stephanie Sheldon

Yi Wang

Salah Zanabili

Emily Zeng

Daniel Zhang

Jiaye Zhang

Julia Zhao