Getting into St. Albans

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

I always take this stuff with a grain of salt. It's one indicator of academic success. But as you say, you have no idea how close some of the kids were to making NMSF. It could be (not saying it is, but just as an example) that TJ has 35% NMSFs and the other 65% are far below the cut off, while at STA 15% are but 50% are within 1 or 2 percentage points of the cutoff. You really can't go only by that, but I also agree TJ has impressive numbers by most counts, and that I think speaks more about TJ than it does STA

.

This rationalization suggests solid elementary course in statistics and probabilty was not part of your academic transcript.

Actually, it was. I'm wondering, where was my poor, Ivy-League training deficient on this example? I made the point that you haven't included information on the distance of other students from the NMS threshold. I provided a layman's example, to be sure, but one that I think made the point very clearly.

A more accurate measurement of National Merit Scholarship success (or preparedness) might be some kind of NMS deficit, where one calculates the mean distance separating the population and students at school A from the NMS finalist cutoff (where those above the cutoff have zero mean distance).

But please, do inform me of my own clear academic deficit.

[Anonymous]

PP again. Meant population OF students.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

My daughter goes to an Ivy and she was not a NMSF either. Many students are elite prep schools don't prep for the PSATs -- so they may not get as high of scores as they could. But, they do prepare for the SATS and that is how they get high enough scores to enter the Ivies. People are really splitting hairs on this thread. Who cares about the NMSF if it doesn't result in a good college acceptance? Not me

.

Is your implication by your daughter's remarks that students at elite prep schools (like STA) will have higher SAT scores than those from Blair magnet or TJ? ...higher AP scores?

No, honestly I don't care about TJ or Blair. My point is that people are really making too much of the NMSF designation. Doing well on the PSAT doesn't get anyone into college unless the person does well on the SAT. People should look at SAT scores, not PSAT scores. NMSF is nice for bragging rights, but even the top, top students who get the "finalist" designation -- get some very lame scholarship amounts for it.

[Anonymous]

If you work with statistics, as I do (the one, by the way, who was scolded for not having had statistics or probability in their curriculum), you know not to look at ANY single indicator. You look at a range of indicators of academic success.

I find that on any discussion of schools, there are a few people who like to jump to conclusions based on a rather narrow aspect of success. Even more importantly, there is no way to control for the initial charateristics of the students. The point should be to try to measure how well the student advances its students, not how well it picks them.

[Anonymous]

PP again. Meant how well the school advances its students (clearly writing was NOT in my curriculum).

[Anonymous]

I agree with 16:26. It seems some anti-private school people chime in with something about TJ regardless of what the topic is. Can we all agree TJ is a great school --- it is the top ranked public school in the country---we get that. What does that have to do with STA folks?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I agree with 16:26. It seems some anti-private school people chime in with something about TJ regardless of what the topic is. Can we all agree TJ is a great school --- it is the top ranked public school in the country---we get that. What does that have to do with STA folks?

And for those of us who don't live in Fairfax County, or even in Virginia, the performance of TJ is irrelevant since our children aren't going there.

[Anonymous]

No, honestly I don't care about TJ or Blair. My point is that people are really making too much of the NMSF designation. Doing well on the PSAT doesn't get anyone into college unless the person does well on the SAT. People should look at SAT scores, not PSAT scores. NMSF is nice for bragging rights, but even the top, top students who get the "finalist" designation -- get some very lame scholarship amounts for it.

You're absolutely right if getting into College is your end game. One can get in a Dision 1 lacrosse jock or jill.

[Anonymous]

...Division 1 lacrosse jock and jill recruit.

[Anonymous]

16:20, I would like to look at STA's SAT scores, but as far as I know they are not available. I asked about this on another thread (or maybe even earlier on this one, I can't remember) and was criticized for doing so. I still can't imagine how they can expect people to cough up so much money without "full disclosure" of their product. I was told that I should look at exmissions as a better indicator, but a lot of other things go into that, such as legacy, money, diversity, etc. Some of our sons are just going to have to get by on their talents! Also, the SAT is at least one raw indicator of the type of academic peers my son would have if he were to attend STA. So I don't see why it's such a bad question to ask. Fire away!

[Anonymous]

I agree. Some folk do go to STA to get into a great College and not nessarily for the best intellectual envirnoment surrounded by cracker jack sharp minds.

[Anonymous]

I can assure you. If these scores measured up to expectations it would be readily available in a heart beat. Exmissions are the next best "surrogate" and even that is fudged now-a-days by grouping exmissions in mirage lots of 5 years to mask the dilutive effect of the increasing number of average institutions and Podunk Us on the roster. For decades, in my time, this information was provided one year at a time. The joys of today's education marketers. Half a million dollars is an expensive ride for Podunk U destination and 10 or so total NMF!

[Anonymous]

1/8/10@10:34 here. I am the original NMSF data hound. I did not mean to suggest that NMSF percentage is the only (or even the best) method of comparing schools. I only started posting because someone made a claim about StA not having many NMSFs that I know is demonstrably false.

I started looking at NMSF data a while ago because it is one of the most objective data sets available. Average SAT scores also are objective, but they are not available for every school. Other measures like percentage of graduates at Ivy league schools are too easily skewed by such factors as geography, athletics, race, and legacy status.

If anyone is trying to compare different schools in detail, I agree with PP that you should look at lots of different measures. It seems that if a school has high SAT scores, high NMSF percentage, and high admission percentage for top colleges, it's probably doing lots of things right as a school. If I think that school will be a good fit for my child, then I'd be interested in it. If a school meets some of those criteria but not others, I'd want to understand why.

[Anonymous]

And for those of us who don't live in Fairfax County, or even in Virginia, the performance of TJ is irrelevant since our children aren't going there.

But, does the performance of STA concern you when other nearby free schools have 4 fold the number of NMFs (40% of the graduating class) and great exmissions. PSAT is a surrogate for SAT scores (there are conversion factors). This "fluke" does not translate into worse SAT scores at these schools or better SAT scores at St Albans.

It does concern potential applicants and their parents who might just take a hike and fork over the dough to Sidwell or Phillips Exeter Academy. Better yet, keep it in the pocket and head over to Richard Montgomery IB or Blair magnet en route to Ivy.

[Anonymous]

194 FCPS Students Named National Merit Semifinalists 2008

One hundred ninety-four Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS) students have been named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) for 2009. Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJHSST), which also serves as the Governor’s Regional School for Northern Virginia, has 143 of the semifinalists.
The semifinalists are eligible to compete for 8,200 National Merit Scholarship awards worth $35 million, to be awarded in spring 2009.

FCPS National Merit semifinalists are:

Annandale High School: Cason Kynes.

Chantilly High School: Sarah Germain, Bharath Krishnamoorthy, and Hye Won Lee.

Edison High School: Katherine Lambertson.

Herndon High School: Kelsey Brandt, Robert Carroll, and Joseph Huchette.

Lake Braddock Secondary School: Myong Choi, Minseung Kwag, Alexandra Tanner, and John Weidinger.

Langley High School: William Brumas and Jennifer Suh.

Madison High School: Jacob Beckhard, Brigid Byrne, Audrey Heaton, Frank Sponn, and James Whitfield.

Marshall High School: Carlyle Blomme, Brittany Harris, and Jessica Levine.

McLean High School: Paul Capp, Anthony Charles, Zachary Charles, Adam Scott, Athreya Tata, and Miles Zinni.

Oakton High School: Matthew Ellis, Adarsh Kallakury, Daniel Metcalf, Mike Raust, and Adarsh Solanki.

Robinson Secondary School: Emily Ferrell and David Levonian.

South Lakes High School: Sarah Binger and Allison Whitlock.

Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology: Spencer Adams, Prashasti Agrawal, Zachary Aman, Pavithra Anand, Brett Anders, Sarah Applegate, Arthi Aravind, Adrienne Arditti, Alex Au, Varun Bansal, Christopher Beacham, Thomas Bettge, Eric Bomgardner, Ranya Brooks, Kevin Casto, Michael Chang, Jonathan Choo, Samuel Clamons, Blaire Claytor, Nathaniel Coddington, Rebecca Cohn, Vivian Cooper, Rebecca Corey, William Czaplyski, Spencer de Mars, Maximilian Dreo, Michael Eng, Brett Evans, Kathleen Ferraren, Rebecca Fielding, Mason Freedman, Rahee Ghosh, Rukmini Goswami, Zachary Greer, Brinda Gupta, Theo Gutman-Solo, Joshua Hahm, Jared Hallett, Jacob Hanger, Zoe Hoffman, Daniel Holohan, Soonwook Hong, Glen Hookey, Michael Howard, Lara Howerton, Lily Hsiang, Blair Hu, Ting-Yu Hu, Ellen Huang, Peter Im, Rishi Iyengar, Han Jang, Sharon Kavjian, Niaz Khan, Alexander Kim, David Kim, Ginny Kim, Hee-Sung Kim, Jin-Ah Kim, Min Jung Kim, Noah Kim, Seung-Hyuck Kim, Jordan Kramer, Michael Kuprenas, Peter Kye, Elizabeth Lagerfeld, Joseph Lattin, Peter Le, Joshua Lee, Joy Lee, Kee Young Lee, Susan Lee, Ashley Lewis, Xiaoxiao Lin, Jessica Liu, Natalie Lubsen, Sumit Malik, James Mannion, Kyle Markwalter, Nicholas Martin, Jacob McAuliffe, Carolyn McCallister, Katherine McLaughlin, Jed Metge, Curtis Mills, William Minshew, Wooyoung Moon, Karen Morrison, Monica Mowery, Joseph Muldoon, Jong Nam, Katherine Neitzke, Christopher Nguyen, Kristin Nguyen, Francis Noone, Christopher Olund, Brian Pang, Lisa Pang, Barbara Pelham-Webb, Samuel Pell, Emma Pierson, Jackson Prestwood, David Ramish, Joseph Regalbuto, Zoe Renfro, Andrew Rodriguez, Alexandra Ruth, Nicholas Ryals, Kathleen Ryan, Debjani Saha, Amar Sahai, Michael Sanders, Rutger Schneider, Cynthia Schwab, Sarah Seid, Hirsh Sharma, Samantha Sharp, Alexa Silverman, Divya Srinivasan, Nicholas Starr, Jeanmarie Stewart, Filip Sufitchi, Narendra Tallapragada, Andrew Tener, Arvind Thiagarajan, Brian Tubergen, Jessica Ungerleider, Elana Urbach, Gregory Vernon, Pooja Vinayak, Lillian Waller, Christina Wallin, John Walsh, Justin Wang, Julian Warchall, Maya Wei, Harry White, Madeline Whittle, David Wu, Joseph Xu, Qihui Xu, Yangbo Xu, and Katherine Zettler.

Westfield High School: Kevin Hu, Amanda Lewis, Robert Marsh, and Taylor Nelms.

West Potomac High School: Jackson Cooper.

West Springfield High School: James Serwin.

Woodson High School: Isaiah Day, Jiho Kim, Kevin Kuchler, Hannah Martins, Adam Nguyen, Christina Stewart, Victoria Waltrip, and Alexander Yohai.

Approximately 16,000 high school seniors were named National Merit Scholarship semifinalists for 2009. More than 1.5 million juniors entered the 2009 National Merit program by taking the 2007 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®).

Three types of Merit Scholarship awards will be offered in 2009: National Merit $2,500 scholarships, corporate-sponsored scholarships, and college-sponsored scholarships.

Merit Scholarship winners will be announced in spring 2009.


###

Note: For more information, contact the FCPS Department of Communications and Community Outreach at 571-423-1200.