High schools with the most NM Semifinalists

<p>Thomas Jefferson HSST (VA): 156
Stuyvesant (NY): 121
Mission San Jose (CA): 88</p>

<p>Congratulations to the aforementioned schools. Does anyone know of other high schools that have remarkable numbers of National Merit semifinalists for the high school class of 2012?</p>

<p>Do you know the size of the graduating classes of each of those schools? I’d like to know what proportion 156 is, for instance, of TJ’s graduating class.</p>

<p>TJ’s graduating class should be around 450 students (from [the</a> school profile](<a href=“http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss/docs/tjprofile_2011.pdf]the”>http://www.tjhsst.edu/curriculum/dss/docs/tjprofile_2011.pdf)). Stuy’s graduating class is somewhere around 780-850, based on the [school</a> profile from two years ago](<a href=“https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb-rc/2010/ca/AOR-2010-310200011475.pdf]school”>https://www.nystart.gov/publicweb-rc/2010/ca/AOR-2010-310200011475.pdf). MSJ (my school)'s graduating class is around 500 students.</p>

<p>So the percentages for each school’s graduating class are 35% (TJ), 14-16% (Stuy), and 18% (MSJ).</p>

<p>Darn, can’t edit it.</p>

<p>The next two schools (that I know of) are Hunter College HS (NY) with 69 out of ~180 (38%), and Harker School (CA) with 59 out of [url=&lt;a href=“Page Not Found”&gt;http://www.harker.org/uploaded/main/pdfs/admission/ADM_HarkerProfile_Admission_FINAL_1011.pdf]~160[/url</a>] (37%).</p>

<p>Obligatory note: MSJ is the only one out of these which is public and open-enrollment (as opposed to private or specialized/magnet).</p>

<p>St. John’s School, Tx - 46/~130=35%</p>

<p>Wow… 88 out of 500 kids were semifinalists at a public school? My public school’s graduating class is about 500 kids, and I was the only semifinalist. I guess public education at Florida really is that bad!</p>

<p>^We’re in the Silicon Valley, and hence have a lot of highly-educated parents (not to mention 75-80% Asians). So the parents value education more, which leads to higher SAT scores, which leads to NMSF. Our teachers and classes aren’t particularly good.</p>

<p>Well, that makes more sense. Not to stereotype, of course, but I’m one of about 4 Asian kids in my entire graduating class. Most of the kids here aren’t too bright to begin with, even though most of them come from good backgrounds and well educated families. The awful public education system doesn’t help, either.</p>

<p>My school has 350 students and 4 of us got it…so a little over 1%. Dang, we look dumb.</p>

<p>My daughter’s class (2011) had 5 out of 280. This year they had ZERO, guessing about the same size class.</p>

<p>Louisiana has 198 semifinalists TOTAL. 32 of those come from Jesuit High School in New Orleans. That’s 16.7% of the entire state from one school.</p>

<p>Our state requires all students to take the ACT therefore many students don’t take the SAT at all and do not do any prep for SAT. Of the schools around here who did have a high number of NMSF ( maybe 10 ) these students have generally been given some prep through the school.</p>

<p>Our (public) high school graduates about 550 each year, and typically has between 45 and 55 MNSF and 18-20 finalists.</p>

<p>Our public HS has 374 in this year’s class and we had a record of 17 NMSF!</p>