2019 national merit semifinalists
![[Post New]](/jforum/templates/default/images/icon_minipost_new.gif){kind=icon}
Anonymous
That's correct and, unfortunately, it has an adverse, though unintended impact on the chances of DC kids who attend local public and charter schools. According ti the website of the Compass Educational Group, a company that offers in-home tutoring for high school students and closely monitors the various stages of the National Merit program, NM establishes a "cutoff" -- the minimum score students need to have to reach semifinalist status based on their PSAT results -- for each individual state. For the 2019 program, these cutoffs ranged from a low of 212 to 223. This link to Compass's website has a table listing the cutoffs for all the states, including DC and Us territories: https://www.compassprep.com/national-merit-semifinalist-cutoffs/ The website also has this to says about the cutoffs for the 2019 class: August 30 Update — All 50 states have now been confirmed. The highest cutoffs ended up at 223 with Massachusetts, Maryland, and California joining New Jersey and DC at that figure. The actual cutoffs for the class of 2019 can be found in the table below. As expected, there was some upward movement in scores, but nothing like the jump in cutoffs seen last year. Forty-five states were within 1 point of their class of 2018 cutoffs (twenty-one unchanged, sixteen up 1 point, and eight down 1 point). Three states saw 2-point increases, 2 states had 2-point declines. Rhode Island was the outlier with a 4-point increase to a cutoff of 220. Rhode Island had been the outlier for the class of 2018 by being the only state with a lower cutoff. What this means is that all DC students, regardless of whether they live in the District or outside it, are subject to the highest point cutoff -- 223, instead of 212 or 213 or some other cutoffs typical of states, such as Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico or West Virginia, that have a larger than average number of students who are minorities and/or living in poverty. So. it's hardly surprising that out of the 36 2018 DC semifinalists, 33 of them were from DC private schools (many of which draw heavily from Maryland and Virginia) and only three from DC non-private schools -- two from Walls and one from Wilson. Doubtless, the same will be true for the 2019 class. |
Anonymous
|
it's hardly surprising that out of the 36 2018 DC semifinalists, 33 of them were from DC private schools ...
Where did you get these stats? TIA |
Anonymous
It was published by Patch.com last year https://patch.com/district-columbia/washingtondc/36-dc-students-named-national-merit-semifinalists The full list of semifinalists from D.C. is below: GEORGETOWN DAY H. S. 000 Atwood, Abraham 000 Brooks, Thomas N. 000 Brown, Evan J. 000 Freedman, Levi H. 000 Kirsch, Isabel L. 000 Mostashari, Samson B. 000 Stern, Benjamin G. 000 Thomas, Karen U. GEORGETOWN VISITATION PREPARATORY SCHOOL 000 Kolesar, Mary T. MARET SCHOOL 463 Ball-Heldman, Julius M. 837 Matsumoto, Kendall NATIONAL CATHEDRAL SCHOOL 000 Giannattasio, Alex J. 833 Mott, Anna May 900 Pearson, Brett E. 900 Song, Paulina Q. SCHOOL WITHOUT WALLS 743 Buring, Ella S. 185 Diggs-Galligan, Sophia E. SIDWELL FRIENDS SCHOOL 999 Anderson, Tala M. 168 Brodnax, Sarah K. 830 Chen, William D. 000 Gupta, Rahul V. 999 Keto, William R. 628 Kislovskiy, Nicole J. 700 Mundaca, Ana 999 Neaher, Sofia 168 Stark, Ella C. 454 Stepanyan, Elen 904 Zhang, Alexandra ST. ALBANS SCHOOL 450 Busching, William 999 Child, Trevor R. 900 Klingler, John A. 999 Rufino, Jonathan E. 000 Sastry, Jayram M. 163 Schneider, Gabriel 833 Shapiro, Griffin T. ST. JOHN'S COLLEGE H. S. 000 Jefferson, Camille M. WOODROW WILSON H. S. 999 Himmelfarb, Samuel A. |
Anonymous
This is last year's list. NP, asking sincerely, why does getting this list matter so much? |
Anonymous
|
Yes - it says it is last year's list. It is the source for the 33 of 36 semi-finalists in 2018 were from private schools.
As for why it matters? It matters for the kids who win, and if you know one of the students (very likely in the small town of DC) it's nice to congratulate your neighbors. |
Anonymous
 
|
Anonymous
|
The Current and Patch will not publish the list, or they will but are slow to do it?
I have heard that the number of public school kids on this list is higher this year. |
Anonymous
I assume they eventually will. |
Anonymous
DC has the lowest SAT scores in the nation and the highest NMS cutoff. Although the SAT scores have to be given an asterisk, because DCPS pays for any kid to take the SAT, so it has much higher participation than other states. |
Anonymous
|
All you ever wanted to know about DC and PSAT and SAT performance -- https://reports.collegeboard.org/pdf/2017-district-columbia-sat-suite-assessments-annual-report.pdf
(Except of course for the names of the NMSF for 2019) |
Anonymous
Thanks for posting the 2019 list. People should refrain from judging a school’s merit based on those scores. While it’s certainly a “nice to have” honor for the students, qualifiers tend to be those whose parents seek (and can pay for) intensive test prep from an earlier age than most public school parents are even aware that their kids will *take* the PSAT again. My own child, from a public high school not on this list, didn’t do particularly well on the PSAT because we didn’t know that early test prep can boost some kids’ scores into this range. After just a little test prep, his SAT scores are close to perfect, so maybe if he went to a school that told us ANYTHING AT ALL about this stuff (no, I’m not this bitter all the time), we would have considered starting early enough for the PSAT, and hey, maybe our school would be on this list with Sidwell, etc. Honestly, our school can’t even hold a regular school-day SAT without being 100 chairs short, starting two hours late, etc. it would be a miracle if any of our kids, smart as many are, made this list. |
Anonymous
| THANKS!! |
Anonymous
|
In conclusion, the class of 2018 finalists were 90% private school students (33/36).
For 2019 private students were were 81% (45/55). Among the publics, Wilson didn't have any semi-finalists this year; BASIS had 2; SWW had 7 and 1 student is homeschooled. |
Anonymous
| is market school maret? |