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Anonymous
I do know several of the DC candidates who got 1600s (both boys and girls), and DC has more than 40 candidates (if there is a tie in the cut-off they take everyone with that score). The fact that the DC candidates of whom I am aware all got 1600 does not mean the DC cut-off is 1600, but it does I think mean there is a still a possibility that the cut-off is 1600. I do agree that a given kid who makes the cut-off in DC has a better chance of being named the actual scholar (who is chosen out of 40-45 candidates) than in VA where there are 60+ candidates, but it is not a 10x higher chance. Bottom line, though, I would argue that the available data does not allow us to make a determination about whether the D.C. cut-off is lower than for MD and VA. You may well be right that it is, but you could also be wrong. |
Anonymous
Certainly the TJ result is impressive -- great school chock full of brilliant kids. BUT in terms of this metric alone, TJ has a class size of over 400, compared to Sidwell's approximately 110-120 (and Maret I think is under 100?). As SAM2 has pointed out, class size is relevant to this sort of inquiry -- in percentage terms, over 10% of Sidwell and Maret kids were Presidential Scholar candidates, and the TJ figure was under 10%. Thinking of it another way, if TJ is three times as big as Sidwell, proportionately they would need 45 Presidential Scholar candidates to match Sidwell's performance in 2011 (which they didn't get). To be fair to TJ, we don't know the score cut-offs and it is possible that you don't need a 1600 in DC to make the candidate cut (but, again, you might -- we just don't know). If the DC cut-off was 1580, maybe there are 25 additional kids at TJ with 1590s. BUT we don't know the cut-offs at this point, so we don't know what kind of fruit we are comparing the Sidwell/Maret apples to in terms of the qualifying SAT score. Stats are tricky things and context (and admitting what you know and don't know) is important. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure I'd trust the veracity of this analysis since I just counted 9 students from Montgomery Blair High School. In view of this, I will not waste my time verifying this data. But, beware, it may be full of inaccuracies. |
Anonymous
Hysterical. TJ has 400 students in a magnet that has a very strict entrance exam. 29 students out of 400 is very impressive. They have 400% more students. (using your silly math). Sidwell has 15 out of roughtly 120 and NCS has 8 out of roughly 80. Maret has 9 out of roughly 60. Those three privates have 32/260. Blair, which is a more reasonably comparable school has 12 out of 120. |
Anonymous
| Am not wrong, know for a fact many of the DC Scholars did not have 1600. This has been the case for the last several years as well. |
Anonymous
| Why is everyone talking about SAT's 1,600? Do they exclude the Math section? |
SAM2
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This PP is correct that students from a small state might have an advantage over students from large states for purposes of being named Candidates. This is because the Candidates designations go to the top 20 male and female scores in each state (40 total), plus any others tied with the lowest score on that list (which is why most states have 51 or 62 Candidates). So a small state like DC or NH theoretically should have an advantage over larger states like VA or MA, which in turn should have an advantage over places like CA or TX. But that advantage assumes an even distribution of scores within each state, and doesn't account for some situation where a low-population state like AK or RI happens to clock 40 scores of 1600. It's really hard to judge. Also note that the score cutoff is based on where each individual student lives, and not where the school is located. So for example, a Maret student living in Virginia would need to score in the top 40 for Virginia, rather than the top 40 for DC. I suspect there's some clever mathematical way to compare these lists to other publicly reported state-level data from the College Board to estimate what the actual cutoff score is for each state. But I haven't had the time to investigate that further right now. If anyone has good ideas for pursuing this investigation, I'd love to collaborate on an approach. Also, I think this point about how one measure might be skewed to favor a particular group (in this case Candidates from DC) is a good reason to look at several different measures. If you mistrust the Candidates measure, you might want to look at the Presidential Scholar Semifinalist measure too. The number of Semifinalists from each state is based directly on the proportionate number of test-takers for each state, so that measure is not subject to any small-state bias (although there might be other forms of bias in that number). Similarly, most NMSF designations are free of small-state bias, because they are based on a state-specific cutoff score. But for NMSF, DC actually suffers a negative bias because the DC cutoff is pegged at the highest state cutoff in the nation. This is also why I like looking at several years of data, because that tends to rub out the peaks and valleys. If other people have good ideas for different ways to look at these numbers, or other numbers that would be interesting to study, I'd love to hear them. Thanks. |
Anonymous
| Hey and guess what the really cool prize is? You get to go to DC. Not much of a prize for those living in the capital. |
Anonymous
Could you please give a more specific location for the spreadsheet? I read the linked thread and clicked on many of the links there, but could not find it. Thanks. |
SAM2
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Sorry about that. Second-to-last paragraph of first post ("Where can I find info about all these schools?"). Be sure to check the MatriculationStats link too -- he has really good info if you are interested in college matriculation data. |
Anonymous
It counts the Math and Verbal sections, but not the writing portion. |
Anonymous
| If you look across all the data you provide, Sidwell, STA and NCS are clearly the strongest schools in this area and compete head to head with the elite boarding schools including Andover, Exeter etc. They are also competitive with the NYC private schools like Trinity and Dalton. After those three schools there is a pretty significant drop off. I was particularly surprised by GDS which I expected to be stronger. Also surprising was how mediocre Landon and prep's performances are across the board from PSATs SATS to college acceptances. |
Anonymous
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Not to nic pic but sidwell has 14 not 15 PS... and the senior class is
Sidwell & NCS are the strongest percentile-wise. Sidwell 14/120 (students) = 11.67% NCS 8/75 (students) = 10.67% Maret appears to be in the same league - does anyone know how many students are in Maret's senior class? |
Anonymous
| 16:11 The "hew" SAT has three sections: Reading, Writing and Math. The Writing section includes the essay but that's only a piece of it. It includes sentence completion and error identification. Where is this SAT information, please? |
Anonymous
| Sidwell has 15. One of the kids listed says studying abroad but that's actually a sidwell kid. |