National Merit Semifinalists 2024
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Anonymous
How about Visi and Stonebridge? |
Anonymous
Bullis’ high school tuition is over $57,000. |
Anonymous
Stone Ridge |
Anonymous
You're using this word wrong. Special ed parents here like me are chuckling. But I haven't read any responses yet |
Anonymous
Wow! |
Anonymous
DC has five times as many test takers as Wyoming and half the number of NMSFs, so this is not correct. |
Anonymous
*Wyoming number is half DCs, rather. |
Anonymous
Who is raining on their parade? From what I can tell, most of the posters are parents who are sour grapes about the whole thing not going well. The post was really directed at them. |
Anonymous
Like these? Some of these results are a joke. Their parents bought them. Many of the smartest kids from our school are not on the list. the cheaters are. Getting NMSF in DC is almost just luck. |
Anonymous
| DD was a seminfinalist last year. It's nice to have but doesn't do much for your application. She was asked to fill out the app for Presidential scholar and declined. She didn't want to work on yet another application! She's at HYP. |
Anonymous
Actually both PPs are right -- because it isn't a state, they don't get a proportional allocation, but the reason they use the highest state cut score is related to the proportional representation goals. The number of NMSF allotted to each state is proportional to their number of graduating seniors in the 50 states (not test takers). California has about 13% of the nation's seniors, so they get 13% of the 16,000 state semifinalists (~2080 semi finalists, no matter what the scores are). The U.S. has ~4.1 million high school seniors. Wyoming has ~7500 seniors, so their allotment would be about ~31 semi finalists, depending on tied scores, etc. If the score calculated based on the allotment is below the commended score however, the commended score is used instead, so often a few states have a smaller number than their allotment would have been. From the National Merit Scholarship Corp.: "In addition to Semifinalists designated in each of the 50 states, and without affecting the allocation to any state, Semifinalists are named in several other selection units that NMSC has established for the competition. These additional units are for participants attending schools in the District of Columbia, schools in U.S. commonwealths and territories, schools in other countries that enroll U.S. citizens, and U.S. boarding schools that enroll a sizable proportion of their students from outside the state in which the school is located. Boarding schools are grouped into geographic regions, each consisting of several states; the Semifinalist qualifying score for students in each region is the same as the highest qualifying score among the states within that region." [emphasis added] https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/images/gid2/editor_documents/guide_to_the_national_merit_scholarship_program.pdf?gid=2&pgid=61 Not published in this document is the reason they chose the highest state cut off for DC and international citizens, but the commended score cut off for territories. Why didn't they all get to use commended? The answer was that by using commended as the cut score, the number of NMSF from DC and international students would have been disproportionately high for the number of students in the pool. DC usually has 200-300 commended students out of ~4,000 test takers, so 5%-8% when the goal is to make roughly the top 1% of test takers NMSF. On the other hand, by using the highest state's cut score, DC usually ends up at just about 1% of DC test takers, give or take. Also, DC has ~6400 seniors, so using a proportional allotment they would get about 26, which actually is fewer than they tend to have each year (30-50 generally). |
Anonymous
Yep. Several kids with extra time on the lists who don't use it in class but pulled it out for this and the SAT. Their parents are masters at manipulating the system. Their classmates know who is legitimately smart and who worked the system---lots of chatter this week. It ultimately won't be much of a bump for these kids as they are not near the top of the class so their grades do not match up with their inflated PSAT or SAT. |
Anonymous
This is the type of poster who drags down every student on that list with these comments. Name your school, PP. |
Anonymous
| Wow—actually a useful and cogent post on DCUM! |
Anonymous
| If you don’t need the money what’s the point of this? Does it help with college if you already have a 35 on ACT??? |