National Merit Semifinalists 2024

[Anonymous]

It's me, your local testaholic!

The local lists are starting to come out.

https://www.mymcmedia.org/158-county-students-named-national-merit-semifinalists/

Congrats to the following MoCo non-publics whose students made the list:

Holton-Arms School (5)
Georgetown Preparatory School (3)
Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (2)
Heights School (1)
Landon School (1)
Living Grace Christian School (1)
Sandy Spring Friends School (1)
Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School (1)
Washington Waldorf School (1)
Yeshiva of Greater Washington (1)
Homeschool (1)


Congrats especially to Living Grace Christian School (tuition $5,750) and Yeshiva of Greater Washington ($19,950), which I have never seen on this board, for tying perpetual DCUM topics Landon ($52,360) and SSFS ($43,200), and defeating Bullis ($53,405 tuition, zero NMSF).

[Yes, I know the school doesn't necessarily have that much to do students' success on the SAT -- intentionally so, via test design -- but I enjoy being snarky.]

[Anonymous]

The list from non-publics is tiny, 18 out of 158 in the county yowza.

[Anonymous]

Stone Ridge has zero as well.

Alexandria Schools: '

St Stephens, St. Agnes 4
Bishop Ireton 1
Immanuel Christian School 2

[Anonymous]

Are these just NMSF or also commended?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are these just NMSF or also commended?

NMSF only

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Are these just NMSF or also commended?

Just NMSF. The College Board doesn't publish similar lists of Commended students, which chaps my hide. Commended would be more useful data when comparing schools & districts, both because, unlike NMSF, the cutoff scores for Commended don't vary by state, and because having bigger numbers to work with would mean any ranking would be less subject to random chance. For example, Living Grace in the list above -- do they typically have a significant fraction of smart kids and one of them just tipped over to NMSF status, or was the brilliant student sui generis? Matters when you are figuring out what to do with your own child.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The list from non-publics is tiny, 18 out of 158 in the county yowza.

A shade more than 11% is not as tiny as you might think. Two factors are in play, though -- there is a pretty big share of smart kids of well-off parents going to public in MoCo, and of the private kids, a lot of the smart-est and well-off-est are going to privates in Washington DC.

This is as good a place as any to note that NMSF has a different cut-off by state, and Washington DC's is historically very high, because it isn't a state. No idea if or when the College Board is planning to change that.

[Anonymous]

More added:

Holton-Arms School (5)
Georgetown Preparatory School (3)
Our Lady of Good Counsel High School (2)
Heights School (1)
Landon School (1)
Living Grace Christian School (1)
Sandy Spring Friends School (1)
Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School (1)
Washington Waldorf School (1)
Yeshiva of Greater Washington (1)
Homeschool (1)
SSSA (4)
Bishop Ireton (1)
Immanuel Christian (2)

And now:
Oakcrest (1)
New School of Northern Virginia (1)
Pinnacle Academy (1)
Trinity Christian (1)
Trinity School at Mountain View (1)
Dominion Christian School (1)
Basis Independent McLean (4)
Madeira (3)
Potomac School (9)
Flint Hill (2)
Ideaventions Academy of Math and Science (2)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:The list from non-publics is tiny, 18 out of 158 in the county yowza.

A shade more than 11% is not as tiny as you might think. Two factors are in play, though -- there is a pretty big share of smart kids of well-off parents going to public in MoCo, and of the private kids, a lot of the smart-est and well-off-est are going to privates in Washington DC.

This is as good a place as any to note that NMSF has a different cut-off by state, and Washington DC's is historically very high, because it isn't a state. No idea if or when the College Board is planning to change that.

It's not because it isn't a state, it's because they has so few students that using the highest cut off actually gets DC more NMSFs than they would have using the standard formula used for states.

[Anonymous]

At DC's school all the kids on the list came in 9th. Curious whether that's similar at other schools?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The list from non-publics is tiny, 18 out of 158 in the county yowza.

There are also a lot more students in public school, and some of them are very smart, too.

[Anonymous]

LOL at BIM having only four.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:At DC's school all the kids on the list came in 9th. Curious whether that's similar at other schools?

Yes. At most schools the top students enter in ninth.

[Anonymous]

It appears that MD and VA had the same cutoff score this year, after a few years where VA's was lower by 1 to 3 points. Of course both are usually lower than DC's cutoff.

[Anonymous]

Has anyone's DC school released their numbers internally or on social media?

I can't find anything for DC. They no longer have the "Patch" or local paper so there's no one source that releases.