NMSFs in DC 2026

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

This was last year.


Public:

Walls (6)
BASIS (3)
Latin (2)
DCI (2)
J-R (1)

Private:

Sidwell (11)
GDS (7)
STA (6)
NCS (3)
WIS (2)
SJC (2)
Maret (1)
Field (1)
Gonzaga (1)

Some public, some private, just as I said.

The point I was making was that DC is a very competitive state as students come in from VA and MD who normally would be in competition there and make DC harder to get NMSF in.

48 total seems like more than 1% of PSAT takers to me.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:And 11th graders (which was the actual relevant number) was 5058.

Here's enrollment by grade for HS -- interesting how much growth there is from 12th to 9th (or is this due to dropouts?)

Grade 9 10 11 12 12th to 9th CAGR
DCPS 4147 3663 3135 2865 13%
Charter 2859 2195 1923 1687 19%
Total 7006 5858 5058 4552 15%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

This was last year.


Public:

Walls (6)
BASIS (3)
Latin (2)
DCI (2)
J-R (1)

Private:

Sidwell (11)
GDS (7)
STA (6)
NCS (3)
WIS (2)
SJC (2)
Maret (1)
Field (1)
Gonzaga (1)

Some public, some private, just as I said.

The point I was making was that DC is a very competitive state as students come in from VA and MD who normally would be in competition there and make DC harder to get NMSF in.

JR is so much bigger than the 4 schools above it and yet only 1 NMSF.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

This was last year.


Public:

Walls (6)
BASIS (3)
Latin (2)
DCI (2)
J-R (1)

Private:

Sidwell (11)
GDS (7)
STA (6)
NCS (3)
WIS (2)
SJC (2)
Maret (1)
Field (1)
Gonzaga (1)

Some public, some private, just as I said.

The point I was making was that DC is a very competitive state as students come in from VA and MD who normally would be in competition there and make DC harder to get NMSF in.

JR is so much bigger than the 4 schools above it and yet only 1 NMSF.

Latin and BASIS are *tiny*

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

But of those, only Walls and JR (which had a whopping 1 last year) are actually DCPS. It's usually the public school district that posts, so again, very little interest for DCPS most likely. Maybe Latin or BASIS or DCI will post their own.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

This was last year.


Public:

Walls (6)
BASIS (3)
Latin (2)
DCI (2)
J-R (1)

Private:

Sidwell (11)
GDS (7)
STA (6)
NCS (3)
WIS (2)
SJC (2)
Maret (1)
Field (1)
Gonzaga (1)

Some public, some private, just as I said.

The point I was making was that DC is a very competitive state as students come in from VA and MD who normally would be in competition there and make DC harder to get NMSF in.

48 total seems like more than 1% of PSAT takers to me.

It’s almost exactly 1%.

4,872 students from the high school class of 2024, attending DC high schools, took the PSAT in 11th grade.

https://reports.collegeboard.org/media/pdf/2024-district-of-columbia-sat-suite-of-assessments-annual-report-ADA.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Other school districts announce, but crickets from DCPS... Likely because most are not from DCPS schools.

That's always the case though. Smart kids from throughout the region come to the region's best private schools, which are in the District, and take most of the DC NMSF slots.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves. Walls typically has a handful, and BASIS and JR and Latin and DCI have a few.

With the high school ecosystem changing so rapidly I'm curious to see if there are any changes. Like, was the MIT acceptee from McKinley a NMSF and bring them into the list this year? Will Banneker have any? Etc.

This was last year.


Public:

Walls (6)
BASIS (3)
Latin (2)
DCI (2)
J-R (1)

Private:

Sidwell (11)
GDS (7)
STA (6)
NCS (3)
WIS (2)
SJC (2)
Maret (1)
Field (1)
Gonzaga (1)

Some public, some private, just as I said.

The point I was making was that DC is a very competitive state as students come in from VA and MD who normally would be in competition there and make DC harder to get NMSF in.

That's not how it works. Rather than setting the score at the top 1% of all DC test takers, the DC score is set equal to the highest state score. It does not matter how well, or not well, students in DC schools do, the cut off score is pegged to the highest test score of a state. So this year, NJ and MA had the highest scores at 225. Therefore, DC's cut off score is 225.

It's absolutely ridiculous, imo. If Wyoming and Vermont can have their own state scores, there's no reason why DC can't.

[Anonymous]

The DC privates with the exception of Sidwell have so few NMSFs. All that money and so little output.

[Anonymous]

My DCPS DC would’ve made the NMSF cutoff in 45 states the year they took the exam. That’s life. In the end it really doesn’t matter except for bragging rights. I’d actually be more curious to see the commended numbers as an overall better comparison.

[Anonymous]

Parents do not send their children to private for one output that you consider “little”. They send their kids to private because of tradition, a rite of passage, for the experience, to be surrounded by peers of similar backgrounds, for classroom management and better academics overall, structure and conformity, to network and PR, and so on and so forth..
it is the public school mindset that addresses things in such a way: If I put X-money in, I have to get one output.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DCPS DC would’ve made the NMSF cutoff in 45 states the year they took the exam. That’s life. In the end it really doesn’t matter except for bragging rights. I’d actually be more curious to see the commended numbers as an overall better comparison.

It is very disappointing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DCPS DC would’ve made the NMSF cutoff in 45 states the year they took the exam. That’s life. In the end it really doesn’t matter except for bragging rights. I’d actually be more curious to see the commended numbers as an overall better comparison.

267 commended + semi finalists in DC. (You have to add them together to get the comparable numbers.)

Data here, if you want to look at other states: https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/images/gid2/editor_documents/guide_to_the_national_merit_scholarship_program.pdf

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My DCPS DC would’ve made the NMSF cutoff in 45 states the year they took the exam. That’s life. In the end it really doesn’t matter except for bragging rights. I’d actually be more curious to see the commended numbers as an overall better comparison.

I'm sorry, that is a bummer!

for me, the only benefit (there were no bragging rights bc none of the other kids at my school had any idea what it meant and deeply didn't care) was that it really does improve your college outcomes and there are a few colleges that give out scholarships or instant admits to NMSFs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:My DCPS DC would’ve made the NMSF cutoff in 45 states the year they took the exam. That’s life. In the end it really doesn’t matter except for bragging rights. I’d actually be more curious to see the commended numbers as an overall better comparison.

267 commended + semi finalists in DC. (You have to add them together to get the comparable numbers.)

Data here, if you want to look at other states: https://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/images/gid2/editor_documents/guide_to_the_national_merit_scholarship_program.pdf

Interesting to compare these numbers to small states where the cut-offs are much lower:

State/Cutoff/#NMSF/#commended
Alaska/215/31/24
Delaware/220/47/84
Montana/213/48/8
North Dakota/210/26/0
Rhode Island/219/50/96
South Dakota/211/46/6
Vermont/216/27/27
Wyoming/210/20/0
DC/225/37/230

DC’s number of semi-finalists is impressive—but look at those commended numbers!

230 is off the charts compared to the small states. DC had more commended scholars than Wisconsin (216), which has 6M people. This might actually justify DC having the highest cut-off; the number of high scorers in this city is disproportionate to its size.

[Anonymous]

Yes, the real reason DC takes the cutoff of the highest state is that there are too many high-scoring kids in DC. If we had our own cutoff, it would sometimes be the highest cutoff in the nation, and it would be politically inconvenient to admit that a city (horrors!) had the highest cut score.