National merit 2026?
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Anonymous
Where the school is. But there are different rules for boarding schools. |
Anonymous
| Any news re Md? |
Anonymous
| Has any local school informed its students yet? September 10 is for public release, as far as I understand. |
Anonymous
Because some states/school districts have a lot more resources. I personally think the current approach is fair. |
Anonymous
Commended is set at a national level. Different states have better or worse educational systems. They want to have the top kids from every state recognized, not just kids from affluent, educated hotbed like Massachusetts and DMV. Because we are a 50 state nation with colleges all over the place that want top kids. There is no moral virtue implied by being an NMF. The criteria is just "top kids from each state based on a state-specific cutoff". I agree with that. To do otherwise would smack of opportunity hoarding. If the cutoff goes up in your state it might mean higher concentrations of smart kids in your state, better school teaching performance, affluence differences, etc. I hope it means that schools are continuing to recover from Covid learning deficits. My kid was impacted during the key middle school years (Algebra). We had to pay for tutoring to get his skills on track to where they should have been. |
Anonymous
It seems to be done to even out the gender disparity. There is some (older) research evidence that the SATs could be redesigned so that women would score better than they do today at the top end. But the NMF org. prefers to keep the verbal doubling formula. For gender balance but probably also because they don't want to have all math geeks (regardless of gender) as NMFs. They need more of a variety of types for surface validity and to provide to universities as incoming students in a variety of intended majors. |
Anonymous
I’ve always assumed it was because the math is easier to study for than the English and they need to get a big enough score differential to make a cut-off. |
Anonymous
Last year, students from Title 1 schools in Massachusetts had to score 222 to be semifinalists, and private school students in the wealthiest Mississippi enclaves only had to score 209. |
Anonymous
That makes sense. |
Anonymous
And in Mississippi, about 40 percent of the semifinalists come from three schools -- two private schools and a public math and science boarding school. |
Anonymous
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This is torture - I want the results!
I know that Sept 10 is the day, but it's so hard knowing that the information is out there!!! |
Anonymous
My kid in public school in NJ got a 219 and won't qualify for SF, but if she instead had gone to the private high school in TN that I attended, she would have. How is that right? |
Anonymous
The state cutoffs seem to be coming out pretty consistently 1 point higher than the "likely" predictions by Compass Prep. |
Anonymous
I think that the system is generally fair. As a public school teacher in DC, I think that DC's scores are inflated by kids who come into DC for private school from MD and VA. I think it's hard when there are lower income kids in DC whose score would get them NMSF in almost every other state, who don't get NMSF, in state tuition, or in state financial aid. I know a kid like this whose scores would have qualified in any state except DC, NJ, and MA, and who would have qualified in DC if their scores were flipped. |
Anonymous
Your kid is not in top 1% in NJ but would be in top 1% in TN. Why is that wrong? |