HB Woodlawn, a public school in Arlington that you don’t test into, only has 100 seniors and more NMSF than any school in DC, public or private. Interesting.

I get the feeling most of the posters in this thread wouldn't qualify for NMSF no matter where they took the test.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

It’s surprising to me how low the numbers for semifinalists for all the DC privates are. You would think for 55k a year they would be getting more output. A Maryland private, Holton Arms has 12 semifinalists this year.

The MD and VA magnets of course leave all these schools in the dust. Thomas Jefferson has more than 100 semifinalists this year.

What is the cut off for VA and MD? You can't compare apples and oranges.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

Why would BASIS be unhappy? They have (by far) the smallest senior class of any of these schools but still had 2 kids who are NMS...about 3% of the class was NMS.

So you take the PSAT in the fall of junior year and the SAT in the year you apply to colleges?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well - they did “drop” if walls kids stayed the same but other kids on average now score higher. Apparently in past DC cut score roughly results in top 1 percent in DC getting NMSF. Wondering if that also happened this year - higher cut score - but even so 1 percent achieved it.

No, it’s like 0.5% this year. Because the total is only what, 37? But there are about 9,000 PSAT/NMSQT takers in DC.

In theory, there could be zero NMSFs in DC. In theory, every kid in DC could be an NMSF. Because the cut score is unrelated to the local population.

This is the crux of the NMSF problem in DC. It's totally unrelated to DC itself.

Except that it is. Posted a few pages back that there were 230 commended scholars in DC this year. This is more than Wisconsin (population 6M), and many times over the numbers of commended scholars in small states with much lower cut scores for NMSF. 37 semi-finalists also compares positively to the small state numbers (again, with lower cut scores).

DC has an inordinately high number of high scorers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

It’s surprising to me how low the numbers for semifinalists for all the DC privates are. You would think for 55k a year they would be getting more output. A Maryland private, Holton Arms has 12 semifinalists this year.

The MD and VA magnets of course leave all these schools in the dust. Thomas Jefferson has more than 100 semifinalists this year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

Feels like fewer overall NMSFs than last year?
MacArthur is the new public entering the list!
Disappointing that neither Banneker nor McKinley have had any in recent years.
BASIS and Latin: last year Basis had 3 and Latin 2, this year it's the reverse. Everyone is totally fine.

Except the BASIS folks love to tout their USNews ranking and what not and disparage Latin.

No. There are a lot of people who post saying that BASIS parents constantly tout their ranking and disparage other schools, but the BASIS parents themselves aren't the ones doing this.

Anonymous wrote:Just so I understand - is this a list of people who took the PSAT last year? Or this year?

They took the PSAT in I think last October in their junior year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

Feels like fewer overall NMSFs than last year?
MacArthur is the new public entering the list!
Disappointing that neither Banneker nor McKinley have had any in recent years.
BASIS and Latin: last year Basis had 3 and Latin 2, this year it's the reverse. Everyone is totally fine.

Except the BASIS folks love to tout their USNews ranking and what not and disparage Latin.

Just so I understand - is this a list of people who took the PSAT last year? Or this year?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

Feels like fewer overall NMSFs than last year?
MacArthur is the new public entering the list!
Disappointing that neither Banneker nor McKinley have had any in recent years.
BASIS and Latin: last year Basis had 3 and Latin 2, this year it's the reverse. Everyone is totally fine.

Anonymous wrote:Here it is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/psat/comments/1nilcp6/2026_national_merit_for_alaska_arizona_colorado/#lightbox

Rearranged the list to public/private and ordered:

Public, total 15:
Jackson-Reed (3)
School Without Walls (3)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)
BASIS (2)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
MacArthur HS (1)
DC International School (1)


private, total 24
National Cathedral School (5)
Sidwell Friends (4)
Georgetown Day School (4)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
St Albans (2)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Edmund Burke (1)
Maret (1)

Visitation is private as well.

Anonymous wrote:Someone just posted list on private school forum:

BASIS (2)
Edmund Burke (1)
DC International School (1)
Georgetown Day School (4)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
Jackson-Reed (3)
MacArthur HS (1)
Maret (1)
National Cathedral School (5)
School Without Walls (3)
Sidwell Friends (4)
St Albans (2)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)

Interesting...usually Sidwell has nearly double digits. NCS had a banner year. Latin did well this year. The BASIS folks must be unhappy.

What's interesting is private schools with 0 NMSFs. Gonzaga and Field off the top of my head.

Here it is on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/psat/comments/1nilcp6/2026_national_merit_for_alaska_arizona_colorado/#lightbox

Rearranged the list to public/private and ordered:

Public, total 15:
Jackson-Reed (3)
School Without Walls (3)
Washington Latin Public Charter (3)
BASIS (2)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
MacArthur HS (1)
DC International School (1)


private, total 24
National Cathedral School (5)
Sidwell Friends (4)
Georgetown Day School (4)
St Anselm's Abbey (3)
Georgetown Visitation (2)
St Albans (2)
St John's College HS (1)
Washington International (1)
Edmund Burke (1)
Maret (1)