Announcing National Merit Semi-Finalists
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Anonymous
| What isn’t being talked about is that many kids took the ACT not the SAT. I can speak to sidwell; and know many kids with a 35 or 36 on the ACT. |
Anonymous
That’s irrelevant. All the area private schools host a PSAT for their juniors. That score gets you to semi-finalist, and to apply for finalist you can submit SAT or ACT scores. |
Anonymous
Wow TJ! |
Anonymous
Despite those rockin' numbers, TJ is significantly behind where they were a few years ago, despite having a much larger class size. FCPS rejiggered admissions to cap high performing feeder schools and removed testing. This is why the other FCPS high schools are now posting such big numbers -- Oakton managed 25. Under the old admissions system, most of those kids would have been at TJ. |
Anonymous
Further indication that parsing school results from year to year is silly — it’s not the schools, it’s the kids, and they’d likely be stellar students whether they are in public, magnet, or private. |
Anonymous
Of course - it’s still pretty interesting to see the current relative concentrations of high-achieving kids. |
Anonymous
I wish they also would give numbers for Commended, which doesn't change on a state-by-state basis and is less streaky, since it's looking at the top 3%, not the tippity top less than 1%. This is modulo the SAT not being as strong at test as it used to be - more subject to practice effects, less able to distinguish top performers from each other, switching to calculators, dropping free response and analogies, etc. |
Anonymous
There are actually about 40 seniors this year. Still impressive at almost 25% NMSF. |
Anonymous
|
Top 5 in VA public (TJ, Oakton, Langley, McLean, Marshall) absolutely trounced top 5 in VA private (Potomac, Basis, Flint Hill, Madeira, SSSAS).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xCdjpoXII9oTmu_hWYFqeWl5XWmTblSu/view?pli=1 |
Anonymous
You know how to compare ratios, right? Apart from TJ, your statement doesn’t hold when considering the number of NMSF as a proportion of the graduating class. |
Anonymous
I don't think that's how you use the word "modulo". |
Anonymous
DP but I would guess it’s an autocorrect fail. |
Anonymous
That just isn't the case. Just for two random examples, Oakton has an enormous senior class of 690. Potomac has a senior class of 120. That means, 3.6% of the Oakton class got NMSF compared to 7.5% of the Potomac class. |
Anonymous
Compared to about 25% of the TJ class. |
Anonymous
| Potomac is admitting most of its students well before 9th grade and often for non-academic reasons. So not apples to apples with TJ. |