National Merit Semifinalist Cut-off Scores for High School Class of 2016

[Anonymous]

I am new to this thread and have to ask, why on earth do you people care so much about Malia? Her personal and academic life have nothing to do with you guys what so ever and it's pointless, childish and gossipy to talk about a child online like this.

The words in bold describe 80 percent of what is posted on the DCUM Forums to a tee. But it's like a tragic accident on the side of the road - I can't stop myself from looking.

[Anonymous]

It saddens me when high/achieving Asian kids struggle to get into good schools while other children will get in anywhere just based on their connections or affirmative action programs.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am new to this thread and have to ask, why on earth do you people care so much about Malia? Her personal and academic life have nothing to do with you guys what so ever and it's pointless, childish and gossipy to talk about a child online like this.

yep, but she's a minor celebrity so just like we dissect the Jolie - Pitt kids, she gets some attention.... I have to say, it must be rough being the child of a notable person, in some ways

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It saddens me when high/achieving Asian kids struggle to get into good schools while other children will get in anywhere just based on their connections or affirmative action programs.

The SCOTUS will end the Affirmative Action/discrimination against Asian Americans!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It saddens me when high/achieving Asian kids struggle to get into good schools while other children will get in anywhere just based on their connections or affirmative action programs.

The SCOTUS will end the Affirmative Action/discrimination against Asian Americans!

Read the thread on this page where I posted a host of links analyzing Fisher II outcomes.

I am very doubtful that the court will effectively AA for private schools (even though privates take copious amounts of fed dollars).

[Anonymous]

Kudos to St. Johns College High School. More semifinalists than any other catholic school in the area. In DC, only Sidwell and St. Albans had more. Very underrated school in my opinion. One of the best kept secrets in town. A bargain compared to the others private schools in DC. Ll

[Anonymous]

You guys are hilarious lol

Congrats to everyone that became a Semifinalist or is the parent or a relation or whatever of a Semifinalist

if you guys want to see stuff about this thing changed, then I'm guessing you guys should do more than bicker online (you've probably already done something more, but I didn't see anyone post about taking more action in the 22 pages of this thread)

Unless/until this thing changes, y'all should enjoy what you got and take advantage of it if you need to!

@ person who says it's mandatory:

At my school, it's semi-mandatory for sophomores (and freshmen I hear, but not when I was one; we took some ACT explore thing that I don't even remember), and it's free for them, but they don't qualify for the competition of course.

Juniors can choose to take the PSAT if they want; they need to pay the fee themselves.

Re: recognition

It really sucks that some schools are apparently crap at notifying their semifinalists. My school honors our semifinalists; nothing flashy or overbearing, and if you don't want to know, then you won't know, but there are spots that easily accessible to the rest of the school if they want to know who our semifinalists are. And the school counseling ladies email the semifinalists early in September to let us know that we're semifinalists and that we've got stuff to do if we want to become finalists which is awesome, because the person in my house that takes care of the mail is a little too hasty in throwing things out...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:You guys are hilarious lol

Congrats to everyone that became a Semifinalist or is the parent or a relation or whatever of a Semifinalist

if you guys want to see stuff about this thing changed, then I'm guessing you guys should do more than bicker online (you've probably already done something more, but I didn't see anyone post about taking more action in the 22 pages of this thread)

Unless/until this thing changes, y'all should enjoy what you got and take advantage of it if you need to!

@ person who says it's mandatory:

At my school, it's semi-mandatory for sophomores (and freshmen I hear, but not when I was one; we took some ACT explore thing that I don't even remember), and it's free for them, but they don't qualify for the competition of course.

Juniors can choose to take the PSAT if they want; they need to pay the fee themselves.

Re: recognition

It really sucks that some schools are apparently crap at notifying their semifinalists. My school honors our semifinalists; nothing flashy or overbearing, and if you don't want to know, then you won't know, but there are spots that easily accessible to the rest of the school if they want to know who our semifinalists are. And the school counseling ladies email the semifinalists early in September to let us know that we're semifinalists and that we've got stuff to do if we want to become finalists which is awesome, because the person in my house that takes care of the mail is a little too hasty in throwing things out...

seems out of whack, Junior year is when t counts....

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys are hilarious lol

Congrats to everyone that became a Semifinalist or is the parent or a relation or whatever of a Semifinalist

if you guys want to see stuff about this thing changed, then I'm guessing you guys should do more than bicker online (you've probably already done something more, but I didn't see anyone post about taking more action in the 22 pages of this thread)

Unless/until this thing changes, y'all should enjoy what you got and take advantage of it if you need to!

@ person who says it's mandatory:

At my school, it's semi-mandatory for sophomores (and freshmen I hear, but not when I was one; we took some ACT explore thing that I don't even remember), and it's free for them, but they don't qualify for the competition of course.

Juniors can choose to take the PSAT if they want; they need to pay the fee themselves.

Re: recognition

It really sucks that some schools are apparently crap at notifying their semifinalists. My school honors our semifinalists; nothing flashy or overbearing, and if you don't want to know, then you won't know, but there are spots that easily accessible to the rest of the school if they want to know who our semifinalists are. And the school counseling ladies email the semifinalists early in September to let us know that we're semifinalists and that we've got stuff to do if we want to become finalists which is awesome, because the person in my house that takes care of the mail is a little too hasty in throwing things out...

seems out of whack, Junior year is when t counts....

Yeah, it does I think the idea is that the school lets us get a feel for the PSAT before it counts, and then we decide whether we want to take it during junior year. They probably don't want to spend money on students that don't want to take the PSAT. (I think people can get reduced or waived fees if they qualify for it, but I'm not sure. If they can, then it's not too bad at least.)

[Anonymous]

Our son is a NMSF. Colorado and his score was 224. I think his good friend, who is also NMSF, got a 217. And I agree with the poster who said the PSAT is useless. Its another way for the College Board to make money and is essentially meaningless. And he/she is also correct that the SAT has little to no correlation with college performance. I have no idea about leadership and creativity. I THINK, but have no data to prove it, that high test scorers on the PSAT/SAT etc. are no more or less likely to be creative or show leadership skills than students who struggle to do well on standardized tests. Note that the odds of actually getting one of the $2500 are very small. Our high school had 12 semifinalists last year and I think all made it finalist. Of those 12 only 3 received one of the $2500 scholarships. So don't get worked up about your child's PSAT score one way or another.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congrats to your child at RM !!! The number one school ahead of TJ!!!

I honestly don't really care that much, but it's pure pretzel logic to ignore the fact that TJ is the number one school in the country and has roughly four times as many NMSF as RM.

All you have done is convince me that people in the magnet program at RM view themselves as totally separate from the rest of the school, which leads me to conclude they are likely despised by the other RM parents and students.

no worse than tj parents view themselves totally separate from other fcps schools.

Maybe, but TJ is actually ranked as number 1 high school in the country whereas RM IB is not.

What good is ranking if they are out performed by small "no name" programs? Beaten by RM AND Blair. I'd take substance over ranking any day.

You don't have to choose. You can take substance and ranking

TJ, where does all this crap about being #1 come from anyway?


For the second year in a row, according to US NEWS & World Report, some school I have never heard of was ranked #1, BASIS Scottsdale was ranked #2, AND TJ was ranked #3, moving up one place from the previous year.............when it was ranked #4 of the best high public high schools in America.


I would love to hear the explanation from TJ parents of how long ago and where they were #1...in the country

PS to the TJ parents who keep hassling the BASIS parents on the DC public and charter school board (which you have no place on anyway), BASIS DC offers "a rigorous liberal arts education," we are NOT a STEM school, so could you stop comparing us to TJ? We also, like every other DC Charter, admit by lottery, and given that we did rank #3 on the DC CAS our first year and #2 our next year, the last year of the DC CAS, before our demographics had changed much - second only to Deal - the "best" public middle school in DC" when we were a Title I school (meaning more than 40% of our students qualified for free and reduced meals), which most people say cannot be done, especially not in two years. THOSE scores in my opinion are much more of an accomplishment (and having 44% of our students score advanced in math that year)

than having rigorous admission tests for 9th grade, and continuing to pile on the pressure, not understanding percentages well enough to understand the point these other parents are making, shitting all over a start up school in Washington DC that has had real problems balancing the laws on IEPs versus their requirements that all students pass comprehensive exams in order to be promoted to the next grade, whose mission states very clearly it is not a STEM school. We are highly unlikely to have a single NMSF next year because we are only going to have 20 12th graders (if that) in our first graduating class. The fact that some TJ parents feel sufficiently insecure to jump the message board fence to take pot shots at us says a lot more about TJ than BASIS DC. It may say a lot about Wilson high school and DCPS that they were the only public high school here to have any NMSF's and out of almost 2,000 kids they had two, but measuring us next year when that wonderful class started in 8th (and we traditionally start in 5th) would be very unfair, especially since we apparently have the highest cutoff in the nation?. Thank you.

Someday I do hope we can give TJ a run for it's money. But that day is a long way off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote: [b]We are highly unlikely to have a single NMSF next year because we are only going to have 20 12th graders (if that) in our first graduating class.

Someday I do hope we can give TJ a run for it's money. But that day is a long way off.

this is what worries me most about Basis, the attrition, and lack of a decent size peer group in higher grades

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Congrats to your child at RM !!! The number one school ahead of TJ!!!

I honestly don't really care that much, but it's pure pretzel logic to ignore the fact that TJ is the number one school in the country and has roughly four times as many NMSF as RM.

All you have done is convince me that people in the magnet program at RM view themselves as totally separate from the rest of the school, which leads me to conclude they are likely despised by the other RM parents and students.

no worse than tj parents view themselves totally separate from other fcps schools.

Maybe, but TJ is actually ranked as number 1 high school in the country whereas RM IB is not.

What good is ranking if they are out performed by small "no name" programs? Beaten by RM AND Blair. I'd take substance over ranking any day.

You don't have to choose. You can take substance and ranking

TJ, where does all this crap about being #1 come from anyway?


For the second year in a row, according to US NEWS & World Report, some school I have never heard of was ranked #1, BASIS Scottsdale was ranked #2, AND TJ was ranked #3, moving up one place from the previous year.............when it was ranked #4 of the best high public high schools in America.


I would love to hear the explanation from TJ parents of how long ago and where they were #1...in the country

PS to the TJ parents who keep hassling the BASIS parents on the DC public and charter school board (which you have no place on anyway), BASIS DC offers "a rigorous liberal arts education," we are NOT a STEM school, so could you stop comparing us to TJ? We also, like every other DC Charter, admit by lottery, and given that we did rank #3 on the DC CAS our first year and #2 our next year, the last year of the DC CAS, before our demographics had changed much - second only to Deal - the "best" public middle school in DC" when we were a Title I school (meaning more than 40% of our students qualified for free and reduced meals), which most people say cannot be done, especially not in two years. THOSE scores in my opinion are much more of an accomplishment (and having 44% of our students score advanced in math that year)

than having rigorous admission tests for 9th grade, and continuing to pile on the pressure, not understanding percentages well enough to understand the point these other parents are making, shitting all over a start up school in Washington DC that has had real problems balancing the laws on IEPs versus their requirements that all students pass comprehensive exams in order to be promoted to the next grade, whose mission states very clearly it is not a STEM school. We are highly unlikely to have a single NMSF next year because we are only going to have 20 12th graders (if that) in our first graduating class. The fact that some TJ parents feel sufficiently insecure to jump the message board fence to take pot shots at us says a lot more about TJ than BASIS DC. It may say a lot about Wilson high school and DCPS that they were the only public high school here to have any NMSF's and out of almost 2,000 kids they had two, but measuring us next year when that wonderful class started in 8th (and we traditionally start in 5th) would be very unfair, especially since we apparently have the highest cutoff in the nation?. Thank you.

Someday I do hope we can give TJ a run for it's money. But that day is a long way off.

TJ was ranked number 1 last year(2014) and again this year (2015) by Newsweek.

TJ was ranked number 1 by USNWR staring around 2008 to about 2012.

TJ was also ranked best (smartest) high school by Business Insider.

TJ was also ranked as having the highest SAT score in the country by Huffing ton Post in 2014.

[Anonymous]

My daughter was a NMF last year and there are a number of colleges in the country that will give out full-ride or nearly full-ride scholarships to National Merit Finalists. Some if the Honors Colleges at those schools are quite impressive. So, it is hardly useless. It also serves as practice for the SAT.

No, it won't open the doors at Ivy League colleges. We learned that this year.

But now I will know that my daughter received a higher PSAT (and probably SAT) than the President's daughter who will still no doubt be attending an Ivy League school next year because that's how the system works. Regardless of which party holds the Presidency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:My daughter was a NMF last year and there are a number of colleges in the country that will give out full-ride or nearly full-ride scholarships to National Merit Finalists. Some if the Honors Colleges at those schools are quite impressive. So, it is hardly useless. It also serves as practice for the SAT.

No, it won't open the doors at Ivy League colleges. We learned that this year.

But now I will know that my daughter received a higher PSAT (and probably SAT) than the President's daughter who will still no doubt be attending an Ivy League school next year because that's how the system works. Regardless of which party holds the Presidency.

if your daughter was URM like MO, her scores would've got her into a top 10 school even without you being potus. Do you know how rare it is for someone who stores in the 99th percentile across the board scores for blacks?