2020 National Merit semifinalists in DC

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: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/

Thanks for posting! Art is amazing. For those for whom NMSF is a possibility, his National Merit blog post (and comments) is a must read.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Bummer, not a great showing for DC public, and that's putting it mildly.

In 2017, Walls had five semifinalists, and there have been years when Wilson had several.

DCPS and public charters, with a combined enrollment of nearly 100,000 students, has four semifinalists.

Sidwell, with 1140 K-12 students, has thirteen.

yes, there the ratio is higher at Sidwell. But the Sidwell kids come from MD and VA too. So they're not all coming from the pool of DC students. In fact none of the ones
I know on that list are DC residents.
Plus scoring well on the PSAT these days is often about prepping. Back in our day, no one would prep prior to the PSAT. Today some kids don't and others
do prep for months if not years. It's a different playing field.

They're taking spots that would go to DC kids. The way NMS works is they select kids based on where they go to school, not where they live.

OK, how about we petition WAPO to publish the highest scorer on the PSAT by DC Ward they live in. That might yield some interesting data to base a merit scholarship on.

Presidential Scholars are based on where they live and much more broadly distributed within DC.