Eighteen Indian Americans are among 60 high school seniors named to the prestigious 2005 All-USA High School Academic teams Thursday by USA Today, the nation's top-selling newspaper.
Four out of the 18 students -- Nikhil Gupta, Sagar Mehta (from New York), Megan L Srinivas (Iowa) and Lekha R Tummalapalli (Pennsylvania) -- have made it to the First Academic team of 20 of the brightest students.
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Each of the students will receive a trophy and $2,500 cash award.
"We are pleased to be able to honour these remarkable students who have demonstrated both impressive scholarship and leadership," USA Today editor Ken Paulson said on Thursday. "They are destined to make a difference."
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A panel of judges from just over 1,600 nominees nationwide selected the first team of 20. Outstanding individual scholarship or intellectual achievement, and leadership roles in activities on or off campus were the most important criterion to the judges.
The students were also judged on academic performance, honours, awards, rigour of academic pursuits and the ability to express themselves in writing.
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The USA Today honors came less than two weeks after the announcement of the 2005 Presidential Scholars, a list of 141 outstanding high school seniors.
A total of 11 Indian Americans made it to that list as well.
Those who made it to the second and third list included Senthooran Arumugam (Ohio); Jeffrey Bhasin (Ohio); Divya Krishnan (New York); Deepak Mishra (Michigan); Anand Palaniappan (Missouri); Reshma Ramachandran (Miami); Nikhil Srivastava (New Jersey); Abhi Gulati Illinois); Shubha Bhat (Pennsylvania); Krishna Gupta (Massachusetts); Vedant Mishra (New York); Kirtana Raja (Texas); Rahul Reddy (Michigan) and Veena Venkatachalam (New
Jersey).
Venkatachalam is the only one among the USA Today list who made it to the Presidential Scholars list as well.
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