NMSFs in DC 2026

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of the people sniping how this proves [insert] (what school is great or not ) (how meaningless or meaningful it all is) (how much or little test prep is involved) (how DC is easier/harder advantaged/disadvantaged), can you hear yourselves? This thread is a genius parody of how generally insufferable DC area parents are.

Kids took tests. Some got really high scores and were recognized. Some of those kids will get scholarships and/or further recognition. Good for them. I bet you those kids behave better than the adults on DCUM.

I think all discussions of schools on DCUM are really just parents justifying the individual decisions they made about their kids' education.

I think extrapolating huge differences in schools based on the test taking skills of literally one or two real people is kind of crazy.

However, I do think the list is useful in the sense of identifying which public high schools have some really smart students, and which have zero year after year.

I would send my kid to any of the public high schools in the list, and would be hesitant to send them to the schools that never produce NMSFs (as a former NMSF).

I think that's fair. I honestly don't know which schools never produce NMSF. I do know that, in the past McKinley Tech and Banneker have both produced NMSF, but I don't know which other public schools not on this list have.

It does give me pause that Banneker and McKinley haven't produced one this year or last year. Or Ellington. This list does differ from th US News "Best DC high schools" list.

These schools have produced NMSF before though, no?

Yes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's even more telling is that none of the DC schools (public, private or charter) have produced more than a single USAMO qualifier in over five years. In a city that has a fairly large contingent of highly educated parents, one would think that the number should be higher by chance alone.

We don't have Regeneron Winners either. There does need to be some institutional initiative for things like USAMO or Regeneron to happen. Certainly a school like TJ has an administration and teachers that care about things like this and create the framework for this to happen.

I know Regeneron in particular needs the school to have a scientific facts committee, faculty sponsors, etc. A kid can't just have a great idea and enter the main competition that gets all the press every year.

Wrong. DC has Regeneron winners, at least from private schools. Just check the winner lists for the past few years.

I am talking the main STS contest winners, not the random science fairs. DC hasn't had one I think ever.

PP you are probably correct. Regeneron requires a lot of available infrastructure. Looking at some of the projects, it is clear that none of them are possible without a well resourced laboratory and a pipeline for placing students within them (for example there was one about a gene knockout in fruit fly as a model of muscular disease which needs fly stocks, mutagenesis kits, screening facilities and imaging - i.e. a university lab). Of course DC has some good to decent universities but there seems to be a limited pipeline in area schools for placing interested kids within them. Certainly DCPS has nothing of that sort.

USAMO qualification on the other hand just needs pen and paper and a willingness to solve hard math problems.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here it is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/psat/comments/1nilcp6/2026_national_merit_for_alaska_arizona_colorado/#lightbox

Rearranged the list to public/private and ordered:

Public, total 15:
Jackson-Reed (3)
School Without Walls (3)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)
BASIS (2)
MacArthur HS (1)
DC International School (1)


private, total 24
National Cathedral School (5)
Sidwell Friends (4)
Georgetown Day School (4)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
St Albans (2)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Edmund Burke (1)
Maret (1)

There's a good DCPS number of winners on this list. I'm surprised they don't at least send out a press release.

Their press releases all seem to related to Muriel Bowser.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's even more telling is that none of the DC schools (public, private or charter) have produced more than a single USAMO qualifier in over five years. In a city that has a fairly large contingent of highly educated parents, one would think that the number should be higher by chance alone.

We don't have Regeneron Winners either. There does need to be some institutional initiative for things like USAMO or Regeneron to happen. Certainly a school like TJ has an administration and teachers that care about things like this and create the framework for this to happen.

I know Regeneron in particular needs the school to have a scientific facts committee, faculty sponsors, etc. A kid can't just have a great idea and enter the main competition that gets all the press every year.

Wrong. DC has Regeneron winners, at least from private schools. Just check the winner lists for the past few years.

I am talking the main STS contest winners, not the random science fairs. DC hasn't had one I think ever.

PP you are probably correct. Regeneron requires a lot of available infrastructure. Looking at some of the projects, it is clear that none of them are possible without a well resourced laboratory and a pipeline for placing students within them (for example there was one about a gene knockout in fruit fly as a model of muscular disease which needs fly stocks, mutagenesis kits, screening facilities and imaging - i.e. a university lab). Of course DC has some good to decent universities but there seems to be a limited pipeline in area schools for placing interested kids within them. Certainly DCPS has nothing of that sort.

USAMO qualification on the other hand just needs pen and paper and a willingness to solve hard math problems.

Yeah, but I doubt many kids enter purely on their own. I don't know anything about the Georgetown Prep USAMO kids, but I would imagine a teacher arranged all the logistics for them to take the tests.

For Regeneron, even if you are doing a project that doesn't require a lab...you still need your school to have a committee overseeing your work, you need to find an academic mentor, etc. A school like TJ already has the school committees in place and they will find you a mentor in the area you intend to submit for Regeneron.

My kid looked into it and was surprised about all the administration needed to enter.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here it is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/psat/comments/1nilcp6/2026_national_merit_for_alaska_arizona_colorado/#lightbox

Rearranged the list to public/private and ordered:

Public, total 15:
Jackson-Reed (3)
School Without Walls (3)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)
BASIS (2)
MacArthur HS (1)
DC International School (1)


private, total 24
National Cathedral School (5)
Sidwell Friends (4)
Georgetown Day School (4)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
St Albans (2)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Edmund Burke (1)
Maret (1)

There's a good DCPS number of winners on this list. I'm surprised they don't at least send out a press release.

Their press releases all seem to related to Muriel Bowser.

“Led, inspired, and funded by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser—currently serving her third consecutive term as DC mayor—13 DCPS students have been selected as National Merit Semifinalists.”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Here it is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/psat/comments/1nilcp6/2026_national_merit_for_alaska_arizona_colorado/#lightbox

Rearranged the list to public/private and ordered:

Public, total 15:
Jackson-Reed (3)
School Without Walls (3)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)
BASIS (2)
MacArthur HS (1)
DC International School (1)


private, total 24
National Cathedral School (5)
Sidwell Friends (4)
Georgetown Day School (4)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
St Albans (2)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Edmund Burke (1)
Maret (1)

There's a good DCPS number of winners on this list. I'm surprised they don't at least send out a press release.

Their press releases all seem to related to Muriel Bowser.

“Led, inspired, and funded by DC Mayor Muriel Bowser—currently serving her third consecutive term as DC mayor—13 DCPS students have been selected as National Merit Semifinalists.”

Actually, 7 DCPS and 6 charter.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:HB Woodlawn, a public school in Arlington that you don’t test into, only has 100 seniors and more NMSF than any school in DC, public or private. Interesting.

lol. cutoffs are different across the board. for example mechanically it is likely that TJ will have more than all DC combined.

They're not that different. This year DC is 225 and DC and MD are at 224. Yes, slightly easier with that 1 point, but does not explain why one school will have 2 NMSFs while another will have 13.

Obviously the reason is that DC-based schools like Sidwell, GDS, NCS and STA are sub-par institutions that have never and could never send even one student to a T20 college.

Or more likely that Sidwell, GDS, NCS and STA are full of rich kids who are legacies who have hooks to get into T20 colleges despite having poorer academic performance than many of their public school peers.

Nonsense. Not a secret that the main reason that so many DC students are admitted to T20 colleges (including the Ivy Plus subset) is that the city has unusually good private schools. Poorer academic performance doesn't explain why these kids may beat out public school peers. My own children went to one of the highest performing DCPS elementary schools EotP all the way up. They were somewhat challenged in math, but the ELA writing instruction on offer wasn't just weak, it was hopeless. By the upper grades, we were hiring writing tutors. We switched to parochial for middle school, and they were so far behind in writing that they struggled in English. A jurisdiction like DC without formal GT programs, or a law on GT education, can only do so much to prep students to compete with GDS, NCS, STA and others in college admission. BASIS certainly tries, but their crappy facilities, weak electives and largely inexperienced teachers drive out most of their student talent before HS. Walls has been hamstrung by affirmative action admissions in recent years. Latin doesn't aim high (but a few of its seniors do).

Uh, well Latin has more semifinalists per person than all of these private schools except the Cathedral School. Also, remind me, does Sidwell Friends have a bus it sends to Anacostia each day to pick up and drop off its students?

This year, Latin had 3 and Sidwell and GDS has 4.

2 years ago Latin had 0.

3 years ago Latin had 0.

I doubt that Latin has dramatically improved in 2 years. And it is laughable to say it is on par academically with the Big 3.

The Latin kids who are NMSF are just grinders who prepped a lot outside of school and would have tested well at any school. And, no, none of them lives in Anacostia.

Classy. And what's Sidwell's and GDS's excuses? All those advantages and they produced fewer semifinalists, when adjusting for class sizes, than Latin. I'd say you're not getting your money's worth.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's even more telling is that none of the DC schools (public, private or charter) have produced more than a single USAMO qualifier in over five years. In a city that has a fairly large contingent of highly educated parents, one would think that the number should be higher by chance alone.

No. That's not really more telling. DC teams don't usually do that. Or know what it is.

+1 i never heard of USAMO until you mentioned it. There are plenty of other math competitions I have heard of.

Wait really? USAMO is by far the most prestigious national math competition. You qualify from the AMC 10/12 and AIME. Maybe you have heard of those, but just didn't realize there's a step beyond the AIME?

[Anonymous]

Arguing that a school's number of NMSFs is any indicator of a school's quality is really ridiculous.

The PSAT is an exceedingly prepable test. My kid who agreed to do test prep the summer before 11th grade went from a 1200 to a 1550 by fall of junior year on the SAT, rocked the PSAT and became a NMSF. My other two went in cold and got a 1200 on the PSAT and then studied in the months after the test. By spring on junior year they were getting 1550s on the SAT. Sure, there are kids who take the PSAT cold and score very high but in my experience this is very few out of high scorers. There are about a million test-prep operations that offer PSAT tutoring in the greater DMV and SAT tutoring that is done the summer before the junior year covers the exact same material as well. Someone is taking all those courses and using all those tutors. Plus it doesn't take much studying to really jump your score. My kids never had a professional tutor--they simply took about 4 full tests on the weekends, reviewed a study guide and voila--a jump of 200-300 points. Had they done this before taking the PSAT you all would be saying "oh my gosh, their school really prepped them and deserves so much credit." Total bs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's even more telling is that none of the DC schools (public, private or charter) have produced more than a single USAMO qualifier in over five years. In a city that has a fairly large contingent of highly educated parents, one would think that the number should be higher by chance alone.

No. That's not really more telling. DC teams don't usually do that. Or know what it is.

+1 i never heard of USAMO until you mentioned it. There are plenty of other math competitions I have heard of.

Wait really? USAMO is by far the most prestigious national math competition. You qualify from the AMC 10/12 and AIME. Maybe you have heard of those, but just didn't realize there's a step beyond the AIME?

There’s also IMO. Which is the next step, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Arguing that a school's number of NMSFs is any indicator of a school's quality is really ridiculous.

The PSAT is an exceedingly prepable test. My kid who agreed to do test prep the summer before 11th grade went from a 1200 to a 1550 by fall of junior year on the SAT, rocked the PSAT and became a NMSF. My other two went in cold and got a 1200 on the PSAT and then studied in the months after the test. By spring on junior year they were getting 1550s on the SAT. Sure, there are kids who take the PSAT cold and score very high but in my experience this is very few out of high scorers. There are about a million test-prep operations that offer PSAT tutoring in the greater DMV and SAT tutoring that is done the summer before the junior year covers the exact same material as well. Someone is taking all those courses and using all those tutors. Plus it doesn't take much studying to really jump your score. My kids never had a professional tutor--they simply took about 4 full tests on the weekends, reviewed a study guide and voila--a jump of 200-300 points. Had they done this before taking the PSAT you all would be saying "oh my gosh, their school really prepped them and deserves so much credit." Total bs.

And yet it somehow doesnt seem random that Thomas Jefferson routinely has 100+ semifinalists.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:For all of the people sniping how this proves [insert] (what school is great or not ) (how meaningless or meaningful it all is) (how much or little test prep is involved) (how DC is easier/harder advantaged/disadvantaged), can you hear yourselves? This thread is a genius parody of how generally insufferable DC area parents are.

Kids took tests. Some got really high scores and were recognized. Some of those kids will get scholarships and/or further recognition. Good for them. I bet you those kids behave better than the adults on DCUM.

I think all discussions of schools on DCUM are really just parents justifying the individual decisions they made about their kids' education.

I think extrapolating huge differences in schools based on the test taking skills of literally one or two real people is kind of crazy.

However, I do think the list is useful in the sense of identifying which public high schools have some really smart students, and which have zero year after year.

I would send my kid to any of the public high schools in the list, and would be hesitant to send them to the schools that never produce NMSFs (as a former NMSF).

I think that's fair. I honestly don't know which schools never produce NMSF. I do know that, in the past McKinley Tech and Banneker have both produced NMSF, but I don't know which other public schools not on this list have.

It does give me pause that Banneker and McKinley haven't produced one this year or last year. Or Ellington. This list does differ from th US News "Best DC high schools" list.

I’m guessing USNWR over indexes on college admissions. Now that things have changed in how colleges are allowed to weight certain factors, I bet colleges treat high school (or even zip code) as a proxy. Banneker is a good school because good universities accept a lot of Banneker students. It’s a bit of a tautology, but if your goal is a leg up in Ivy admissions… send your kid to Banneker.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arguing that a school's number of NMSFs is any indicator of a school's quality is really ridiculous.

The PSAT is an exceedingly prepable test. My kid who agreed to do test prep the summer before 11th grade went from a 1200 to a 1550 by fall of junior year on the SAT, rocked the PSAT and became a NMSF. My other two went in cold and got a 1200 on the PSAT and then studied in the months after the test. By spring on junior year they were getting 1550s on the SAT. Sure, there are kids who take the PSAT cold and score very high but in my experience this is very few out of high scorers. There are about a million test-prep operations that offer PSAT tutoring in the greater DMV and SAT tutoring that is done the summer before the junior year covers the exact same material as well. Someone is taking all those courses and using all those tutors. Plus it doesn't take much studying to really jump your score. My kids never had a professional tutor--they simply took about 4 full tests on the weekends, reviewed a study guide and voila--a jump of 200-300 points. Had they done this before taking the PSAT you all would be saying "oh my gosh, their school really prepped them and deserves so much credit." Total bs.

And yet it somehow doesnt seem random that Thomas Jefferson routinely has 100+ semifinalists.

100 is a lot for them. A lot of people got in trouble when the number was in the 60s last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What's even more telling is that none of the DC schools (public, private or charter) have produced more than a single USAMO qualifier in over five years. In a city that has a fairly large contingent of highly educated parents, one would think that the number should be higher by chance alone.

No. That's not really more telling. DC teams don't usually do that. Or know what it is.

+1 i never heard of USAMO until you mentioned it. There are plenty of other math competitions I have heard of.

Wait really? USAMO is by far the most prestigious national math competition. You qualify from the AMC 10/12 and AIME. Maybe you have heard of those, but just didn't realize there's a step beyond the AIME?

There’s also IMO. Which is the next step, right?

Yes, but for that you’re on the US team, and it’s an international competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Arguing that a school's number of NMSFs is any indicator of a school's quality is really ridiculous.

The PSAT is an exceedingly prepable test. My kid who agreed to do test prep the summer before 11th grade went from a 1200 to a 1550 by fall of junior year on the SAT, rocked the PSAT and became a NMSF. My other two went in cold and got a 1200 on the PSAT and then studied in the months after the test. By spring on junior year they were getting 1550s on the SAT. Sure, there are kids who take the PSAT cold and score very high but in my experience this is very few out of high scorers. There are about a million test-prep operations that offer PSAT tutoring in the greater DMV and SAT tutoring that is done the summer before the junior year covers the exact same material as well. Someone is taking all those courses and using all those tutors. Plus it doesn't take much studying to really jump your score. My kids never had a professional tutor--they simply took about 4 full tests on the weekends, reviewed a study guide and voila--a jump of 200-300 points. Had they done this before taking the PSAT you all would be saying "oh my gosh, their school really prepped them and deserves so much credit." Total bs.

And yet it somehow doesnt seem random that Thomas Jefferson routinely has 100+ semifinalists.

I don't follow your argument. The TJ crowd lives and breathes by test prep. Half those kids were in Russian Math school since the age of 5. And have you been to an C2 Tutoring Center or similar on the weekend in Fairfax County? I have. It's literally overrun by TJ students. AND at the time of the PSAT the TJ kids will only have been at TJ for 2 years so it's not like they've been molded and created by TJ.