2020 National Merit semifinalists in DC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also heard that the cut-off in DC this year was 2 missed questions. So the DC semi-finalists missed either 0, 1 or in a few cases 2 questions (questions are not all weighted the same so some who missed 2 did not make it as a semi-finalist). In contrast in many states kids could miss 10+.

So no way is that a reflection on DCPS. To miss 0 or 1 questions a kid has to both know the material and be a phenomenal test taker. Zone out for a minute? Your score is blown.
I wonder in part if the environment the kids took the test effected their scores. Wilson gives the test to everyone. You can imagine those PSAT classrooms could be chaotic. If the standard is perfection or 1 question from it, a difference in environment (quiet testing room vs. not) could easily affect who misses one question vs. who misses two.

That is a next level excuse. Kudos.

[Anonymous]

Thank you very much for these very useful responses.

Added to this mix also is the "noise" exclusive to the DC environment of private schools. Is there an argument to be made that the test is biased against DCPS students because they are competing with many MD/VA juniors attending DC-based private schools?

Are kids from MD and VA "taking" DC slots for NMSF? It seems that the denominator is made up principally of DCPS kids but the preponderance of awardees are private school out-of-towners. Is there merit to this line of thinking?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I also heard that the cut-off in DC this year was 2 missed questions. So the DC semi-finalists missed either 0, 1 or in a few cases 2 questions (questions are not all weighted the same so some who missed 2 did not make it as a semi-finalist). In contrast in many states kids could miss 10+.

So no way is that a reflection on DCPS. To miss 0 or 1 questions a kid has to both know the material and be a phenomenal test taker. Zone out for a minute? Your score is blown.
I wonder in part if the environment the kids took the test effected their scores. Wilson gives the test to everyone. You can imagine those PSAT classrooms could be chaotic. If the standard is perfection or 1 question from it, a difference in environment (quiet testing room vs. not) could easily affect who misses one question vs. who misses two.

While that probably will be true next year (for current juniors), this year (current seniors) you could miss up to 5 (excluding the 10/24/18 alternate test date where you could miss 1 total). We won't know the cutoffs for this year's juniors until September, so it may go down.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also heard that the cut-off in DC this year was 2 missed questions. So the DC semi-finalists missed either 0, 1 or in a few cases 2 questions (questions are not all weighted the same so some who missed 2 did not make it as a semi-finalist). In contrast in many states kids could miss 10+.

So no way is that a reflection on DCPS. To miss 0 or 1 questions a kid has to both know the material and be a phenomenal test taker. Zone out for a minute? Your score is blown.
I wonder in part if the environment the kids took the test effected their scores. Wilson gives the test to everyone. You can imagine those PSAT classrooms could be chaotic. If the standard is perfection or 1 question from it, a difference in environment (quiet testing room vs. not) could easily affect who misses one question vs. who misses two.

While that probably will be true next year (for current juniors), this year (current seniors) you could miss up to 5 (excluding the 10/24/18 alternate test date where you could miss 1 total). We won't know the cutoffs for this year's juniors until September, so it may go down.

The cut-off this year in DC was between 2 and 3 missed questions (from kids I know who missed 2 or 3 and did not qualify).

Interesting that in one year it could go from 5 to 2. I wonder if last year was an aberration or if this year is a new trend.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you very much for these very useful responses.

Added to this mix also is the "noise" exclusive to the DC environment of private schools. Is there an argument to be made that the test is biased against DCPS students because they are competing with many MD/VA juniors attending DC-based private schools?

Are kids from MD and VA "taking" DC slots for NMSF? It seems that the denominator is made up principally of DCPS kids but the preponderance of awardees are private school out-of-towners. Is there merit to this line of thinking?

That has been discussed previously in this thread, but DC has a higher proportional representation than other states. While this year seems lower, I think a typical distribution of DC NMSF would be 20% DCPS/Charter, 30% DC resident private, and 50% VA/MD private. Since we get double the national average (0.8% vs. 0.4%), it should all balance out in the end.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also heard that the cut-off in DC this year was 2 missed questions. So the DC semi-finalists missed either 0, 1 or in a few cases 2 questions (questions are not all weighted the same so some who missed 2 did not make it as a semi-finalist). In contrast in many states kids could miss 10+.

So no way is that a reflection on DCPS. To miss 0 or 1 questions a kid has to both know the material and be a phenomenal test taker. Zone out for a minute? Your score is blown.
I wonder in part if the environment the kids took the test effected their scores. Wilson gives the test to everyone. You can imagine those PSAT classrooms could be chaotic. If the standard is perfection or 1 question from it, a difference in environment (quiet testing room vs. not) could easily affect who misses one question vs. who misses two.

While that probably will be true next year (for current juniors), this year (current seniors) you could miss up to 5 (excluding the 10/24/18 alternate test date where you could miss 1 total). We won't know the cutoffs for this year's juniors until September, so it may go down.

The cut-off this year in DC was between 2 and 3 missed questions (from kids I know who missed 2 or 3 and did not qualify).

Interesting that in one year it could go from 5 to 2. I wonder if last year was an aberration or if this year is a new trend.

No, it was not, unless they were among the few who took the alternate Saturday test administration. Are you talking about this year's juniors or seniors?

Last year's alternative test date was an aberration, but this year's (juniors) normal test was too easy and therefore you needed to be near perfect.

[Anonymous]

As recommended above, this is a useful article on this subject:
https://www.compassprep.com/national-merit-semifinalist-cutoffs/. There are many caveats to this test and NMSF criteria. I think it is important to understand the qualifiers as laid out well in this article.

The PSAT by itself is just one of several indicators of academic excellence. The fact that there is this national recognition conferred -- NMSF -- which is based on relative state-based rankings, creates misunderstanding. In short, there are probably a respectable number of DC students getting into the 99 percentile nationally, who simply are not getting recognized as such because the NMSF is a relative ranking within individual states rather than based on national rankings.

Perhaps they should change the name to "STATE Merit Semi-Finalist" which would go a long way to clarify the misunderstanding.

A better assessment would be to see the % of DCPS students in the top 1% and 5%. It would be very interesting to see our relative representation there.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is that a typical number for DC? I went to high school in Hawaii and there were 28 National Merit Semifinalists in my graduating class.

Hawaii has a much lower score cut to reach it's 1.1% of test takers. So if you want to compare apples to apples (which NMSF does not do) you'd have to know how many kids who go to school in DC met Hawaii's cut off.

Maybe the 28 were Commended Scholars, not Semifinalists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is that a typical number for DC? I went to high school in Hawaii and there were 28 National Merit Semifinalists in my graduating class.

Hawaii has a much lower score cut to reach it's 1.1% of test takers. So if you want to compare apples to apples (which NMSF does not do) you'd have to know how many kids who go to school in DC met Hawaii's cut off.

Maybe the 28 were Commended Scholars, not Semifinalists.

Hawaii had 55 NMSF in 2018, so that high school had over half of the states total? Not even TJ does that.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is that a typical number for DC? I went to high school in Hawaii and there were 28 National Merit Semifinalists in my graduating class.

Hawaii has a much lower score cut to reach it's 1.1% of test takers. So if you want to compare apples to apples (which NMSF does not do) you'd have to know how many kids who go to school in DC met Hawaii's cut off.

Maybe the 28 were Commended Scholars, not Semifinalists.

Hawaii had 55 NMSF in 2018, so that high school had over half of the states total? Not even TJ does that.

https://bulletin.punahou.edu/2020-national-merit-scholarship-semifinalists/

[Anonymous]

Re Hawaii with 55 NMSF and the one school with half the states semi-finalists compared with TJ.

The Hawaii cutoff in 2020 is 219. The VA cutoff is 222. A three-point difference of cutoff would mean a difference of perhaps two or three questions wrong, which means there would be a number more TJ kids making the cutoff. NMSF cannot be compared between states because it is a relative scale based on the state level criteria not national criteria.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is that a typical number for DC? I went to high school in Hawaii and there were 28 National Merit Semifinalists in my graduating class.

Hawaii has a much lower score cut to reach it's 1.1% of test takers. So if you want to compare apples to apples (which NMSF does not do) you'd have to know how many kids who go to school in DC met Hawaii's cut off.

Maybe the 28 were Commended Scholars, not Semifinalists.

Hawaii had 55 NMSF in 2018, so that high school had over half of the states total? Not even TJ does that.

Half came from Punahou and probably most of the rest came from ‘Iolani.

There are a small number of private schools in Hawaii that produce a large fraction of the top Hawaii students by many measures.

[Anonymous]

For those of you on this discussion, I just received this article: There Was A Major Drop in PSAT Scores. College Board, Please Explain." https://www.compassprep.com/major-drop-in-psat-scores/

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I also heard that the cut-off in DC this year was 2 missed questions. So the DC semi-finalists missed either 0, 1 or in a few cases 2 questions (questions are not all weighted the same so some who missed 2 did not make it as a semi-finalist). In contrast in many states kids could miss 10+.

So no way is that a reflection on DCPS. To miss 0 or 1 questions a kid has to both know the material and be a phenomenal test taker. Zone out for a minute? Your score is blown.
I wonder in part if the environment the kids took the test effected their scores. Wilson gives the test to everyone. You can imagine those PSAT classrooms could be chaotic. If the standard is perfection or 1 question from it, a difference in environment (quiet testing room vs. not) could easily affect who misses one question vs. who misses two.

While that probably will be true next year (for current juniors), this year (current seniors) you could miss up to 5 (excluding the 10/24/18 alternate test date where you could miss 1 total). We won't know the cutoffs for this year's juniors until September, so it may go down.

The cut-off this year in DC was between 2 and 3 missed questions (from kids I know who missed 2 or 3 and did not qualify).

Interesting that in one year it could go from 5 to 2. I wonder if last year was an aberration or if this year is a new trend.

It the nature of normalizing scores across different tests. This year was probably an "easier" test, so less wiggle room in the weighting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Is that a typical number for DC? I went to high school in Hawaii and there were 28 National Merit Semifinalists in my graduating class.

Hawaii has a much lower score cut to reach it's 1.1% of test takers. So if you want to compare apples to apples (which NMSF does not do) you'd have to know how many kids who go to school in DC met Hawaii's cut off.

Maybe the 28 were Commended Scholars, not Semifinalists.

Hawaii had 55 NMSF in 2018, so that high school had over half of the states total? Not even TJ does that.

https://bulletin.punahou.edu/2020-national-merit-scholarship-semifinalists/

Interesting. Confusing, especially the part about the percentiles being off too, but interesting.