Meadows School student Divya Ramakrishnan named semifinalist in 2014 National Merit Scholarship Program.

An academically accomplished Divya attained a perfect score of 2400 in the SAT Reasoning Test.  She also scored a perfect 240 in PSAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test.  Divya is the only Indian heritage student from Southern Nevada to be named 2014 National Merit Scholarship Semifinalist.

The academically talented high school seniors will now have an opportunity to continue in the competition for National Merit Scholarships worth about $35 million that will be offered next spring.  All National Merit Scholarship winners will be selected from the group of Finalists. Merit Scholar designees.  Students are selected on the basis of their skills, accomplishments, and potential for success in rigorous college studies.

During the past academic year, Divya led her Meadows School Science Bowl team to the regional championship and competed in the National championship this April.  Besides, for the last two years, she had been the individual sweepstakes winner in JCL Latin competitions.
On the extra-curricular side, she is the setter of the Varsity volleyball team and she plays clarinet for the school bands. Divya, daughter of Gopal and Radhika Ramakrishnan, is aspiring to be Neonatologist and planning to purse her college education at either Stanford, Harvard or Princeton.  

In 2011, Divya was named the Meadows Ninth Grade Student of the Year.  Divya is a member of the science team from Meadows which won the 2013 National Science Bowl Regional Championship.  

This year Divya was selected as one of 51 top-academic achievers to attend the 30th annual Research Science Institute (RSI) program at MIT during the summer of 2013. The RSI program is the most competitive and intensive science research program for rising seniors in the nation. The RSI program, held at MIT, is a six-week, cost-free research program where the students chosen are matched up with a mentor to conduct one-on-one research in their scientific fields of interest. Divya was mentored by Dr. Christopher Walsh, the Chief of the Genetics Division at Children’s Hospital Boston. She worked on a research project focused on identifying somatic mutations, or post-fertilization mutations, in the genomes of autistic patients.