Reply to National Merit Semifinalist 2018

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[quote=Anonymous]National Merit Semifinalists and Presidential Scholar Candidates tell us simply this, that these students performed very well on a certain standardized exam.  That is an achievement to be recognized and appreciated, but it is not the complete story of that student, their classmates, or their schools.

In the case of the National Merit Semifinalists, the recognized students performed exceedingly well on the PSAT exam administered to them in October of their Junior year.

In the case of the Presidential Scholar Candidates, the students earned a perfect 1600 SAT or 36 ACT (if they live in MD or VA), or close to that mark (if they live in DC I believe you can earn a 1580 or 1590 SAT).  In the past few years I have noticed that most of the States' Presidential Scholar Candidates achieve that honor by taking the ACT to earn a perfect 36.  In some States, only one or two achieve it through a perfect SAT score.  That is not saying the SAT is more difficult, but I do believe the ACT's shorter sections allow a student to focus and then regroup more often.

A few years ago one of my children earned NMSF and took the SAT exam missing only two questions.  We knew that 1590 SAT was not good enough to be a Presidential Scholar Candidate in our State, but in no rationale world did my child want to sit for the ACT -- and they did not.  Sometimes how many Presidential Scholar Candidates a school has comes down to how many of their strongest test takers chose to take the ACT versus the SAT,  or how many settled for an almost-perfect ACT or SAT score instead of  going back for a second attempt.

The National Merit Semifinalist and Presidential Scholar Candidate awards tell us nothing about a students' transcripts, their extracurricular achievements, personalities, or contributions to their schools and communities.  Thus such awards are not to be all and end all of either a school's strength or of their student's college admissions success.

Another one of my children attended a (non-local) high school with only 99 students in the class, 9 of whom were National Merit Semifinalists and 1 of whom also went on to be a Presidential Scholar Candidate.  That class sent a remarkable 6 students to Harvard and 6 students to Stanford that year.

The only student to earn both National Merit Semifinalist and Presidential Scholar Candidate was waitlisted or rejected at both of those universities and very happily and successfully went on to attend Yale.

The 9 National Merit Semifinalists from that class distributed themselves according to their needs and goals, 2 to Harvard, 1 to Haverford, 1 to Harvey Mudd, 1 to Middlebury, 1 to MIT, 1 to Stanford, 1 to the University of North Carolina, and the aforementioned 1 to Yale.  All of them accomplished students.

Signed, An Older Parent.  Been There, Done That.[/quote]

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