Reply to So why does Wilson not have a single National Merit Semifinalist?

Forum Index » DC Public and Public Charter Schools

Reply to "So why does Wilson not have a single National Merit Semifinalist?"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It is really hard to be a semifinalist in DC.  In most states scores in the top 98% will get you there.  In DC you have to score in the top 99.5% (of kids in school in DC).  Some kids are really well prepared.  Some are great at taking tests.  The fact that no one from Wilson got it this year doesn’t say anything about the school.  There could be a hundred kids there who scored in the top 99% and in this city that wouldn’t be enough. [/quote]

The cutoff is the same in every state for percentile of kids that attend school in that state. What hurts DC kids is that it's done by where you go to school, not where you live. DC has the highest cutoff score in the nation -- tied with a couple other states -- because it has a relatively large number of kids who score very high. A score that will qualify in most of the country won't in DC. DC has a relatively small school population -- about 7,000 high school seniors each year -- and private schools that draw high-scoring kids from the surrounding suburbs.[/quote]

That is not technically correct. Each state is assigned a percentile for NMSF based on the national percentage of college seniors who attend school in that state. DC is a city so obviously it's percentage is miniscule (~5600 seniors in DC/~3.6 million graduates = ~0.0015). So the "cut" would be at the score of roughly the top 8 students' scores. That becomes ridiculous in practice, so DC is assigned a cut score (always the top one), as are boarding schools and US schools abroad, and anyone who gets that top national cut score is a NMSF. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics