Our child was accepted to middle school at 3 Niche 100 ranked private schools. In deciding on enrollment, we whittled down which one to commit to on a number of factors, and then made our deposit by the deadline to “hold the spot”.
One of us two parents has been continuously second-guessing our decision on the selected school. Specifically, Mom thinks that school “X” is not as academically challenging as schools “Y” and “Z”. Reported SAT scores are so comparable, it’s hard to say one is better than the next even if the scores are 10-20 points variant. Mom then focused on something we hadn’t really stopped to fully consider: National Merit Scholar Sifinalists and Finalists.
Schools “Y” and “Z” have 9 and 16 National Merit Scholarships FINALISTS respectfully.
But the school we selected — “X” — had ZERO finalists, and only TWO semi finalists. The other two had 19 and 26 semi finalists, respectfully.
This got my attention. I have been defending our choice of “X”, and the schools matriculated and SAT scores made me feel confident in the choice. But this Nat Merit Scholarship thing has floored me. All else being equal, we should see similar numbers from our “choice” — but over several years, it is woefully underrepresented in this comparison.
According to what I’ve read online, Nat Merit Scholarship semi finalists are selected among HS juniors who take the PSAT and score among the top 3% of all test takers in the country — and from that cohort, the eggy all finalists are then selected based on other factors like GPA, essays, references, etc.
I welcome feedback on this from parents more knowledgeable than myself. My questions:
How prevelant is the taking of PSAT among high school juniors at “top ranked” private schools ranked in the Top 100 Niche rankings? I would assume it would be quite high, but my new theory to explain the lack of semi-finalists and finalists at our chosen school is that the test is deemphasuzed or even discouraged. That’s unlikely, right?
I assigning too much weight to Natioonal Merit Scholarship awards? Should this be a measure if school academic rigor and is it seen by college admissions personnel as a “mark” on an assumed “elite private secondary school”?
Would you change an enrollment decision based on the huge gap in awards as described in the background above, even forgoing a couple $x,xxx in deposit, over this? (I would justify the cost as “my error” for not fully investing the time to get educated on importance of Nat Merit Scholarship as a comparative measure)
I welcome any other thoughts or feedback. Thanks for reading and commenting.
Without knowing the specific schools, it’s tough to say. One thing to keep in mind is that National Merit Semifinalists are really the top 1% of PSAT/NMSQT takers, based solely on PSAT scores, but that the 1% is calculated by state. Therefore, cutoffs are very high in many Northeastern states and much lower in some rural states like the Dakotas and Wyoming. Assuming that your three schools are in the same state, this shouldn’t be an issue.
About half of semifinalists become finalists, based on GPA, curriculum, final SAT scores, etc.
IMO there should be a very high correlation between numbers of NMSF and SAT scores for schools within the same state/region. Are the three schools comparable in size? If they are, I suspect the reported SAT score averages are inaccurate. If you are going by what is reported on Niche, keep in mind that those scores are self-reported based on surveys responses.
Do all the schools have the same # of students? The absolute numbers could be misleading.
Any discrepancy could also be due to selection criteria (admissions officers preferring good test takers/scores over other criteria) or time spent during the school day on test prep. Neither of those have any correlation to how capable or inspired the teaching staff is in challenging and engaging the students.
Without knowing which schools, I can tell you that not everyone preps for the PSAT. So for many kids they’re taking it cold & their scores will reflect that. This has been the case with my daughter’s old school and her current one. However, some schools may have a different approach, and they may encourage the kids to prep officially or it’s just the unofficial culture. We see discrepancies like this in NYC schools - there is typically a higher number of finalists (as a % of total class) in selective public schools and certain private schools, but not in others. I wouldn’t say that those schools are better than the others, I think it’s more a matter of approach.
When DS was junior, he took the PSAT for the first time with no prep. His school simply did not believe in spending classroom time on standardized testing. There were 2 kids who ended up as NMF. And FWIW, neither was in the larger group who went on to ivies.
Remember too that often the truly exceptional kids, especially in math, may be eclipsing the NMF kid at a level the standardized tests don’t go near. That is not reflected in NMF results, yet if that same math genius is a tad weaker verbally, it’ll keep him out of NMF. Put another way, this test values a certain type of student and performance.
I would not let the results of a 2 hour test, which kids may or may not have prepped for, be a consideration in my choice.
I think my kids’ school uses the PSAT alongside an early administration of the ACT (both taken cold) mainly to determine which test each student is most likely to do well on when it counts. National Merit finalists at my children’s school are rare, even among the students who get stratospheric scores on the actual SAT and ACT. I don’t know why that is so (other than the very high cutoff for NMSF for boarding school students), but I don’t see why it would matter.
There are multiple public schools in our area with 45-60 NMF every year.
I would never send my kids there and many local families chose private Catholic schools over those pressure cooker environments.
Be sure you know what you are looking for.
Are those “actual finalists”, or the more common “semi-finalists” or even much more common still “Commended Students”? Because I doubt you have multiple local schools that have 45-60 MNF each year. Our local high school district is ranked #50 nationwide by whatever arbitrary rating assigns such things, and it typically has only 4-5 SEMI finalists each year, and several dozen “commended students”.
To be certain, the local schools superintendent raves about the aggregate number including “commended students”, which isn’t actually an award category and confers no academic scholarship — but parents and those without the time to notice these details seem to be distracted by the “commended” consolation acknowledgment as some celebration of excellence.
Technically, semi-finalists-but around here, nearly 100% become finalists because that is who they are.
And yes 40-85! YES 85 in individual public schools.
It’s actually funny that you don’t believe me.
This is the Bay Area.
CA.
Oh, and the cut-off score for CA is one of the highest-221 for 2017 and predicted higher for the class of 2018.
@RansomEvergladesPrinceton. You might find this article useful. It details NMSF for California in 2017. There were 13 schools that each had more than 30 NMSF, including one that had 84! None of these is a magnet test in school as far as I can tell, and only 1 is private (Harker).
Stuyvesant High School in NYC (a test-in magnet school) had 131 NMSF in a recent year.
Obviously, test preparation is a factor to consider. But PSAT/SAT scores are highly correlated with IQ scores, a fact which has been explored and validated for decades by psychologists and programs like Duke TIP and Johns Hopkins CTY.
I don’t want to get into what IQ is purporting to measure and whether it’s valid or not. But whatever it measures, I think we can agree that in terms of sheer IQ horsepower out there, a number of these large public schools - especially test-in magnet schools in NYC and Virginia (Thomas Jefferson) and other places - will put any boarding school to shame, and any private school for that matter.
Only you and your child can determine how important this aspect of educational environment is for your family. But I don’t think the scores are simply indicative of a pressure cooker environment. The raw IQ material is very high at these schools with large numbers of NMSF.
Thanks. I have to look into the details of those scores, but I suspect that “131” is a big bucket number that includes semi-finalists and “commended students”. Both of those are laudable achievements, I suppose, but they are not “finalists”, which is the “F” in “NMSF”. Being a “commended student” is not being a “finalist”.
There is great difficulty in making apples-to-apples comparisons even on what should be a straightforward metric. Teachers, school superintendents (like in my town), parents and students have a vested interest it seems in pushing the boundary of the definition to qualify ever larger cohorts of students as “scholars”.
In the “X, Y, Z” schools example I offered above, the number of finalists and semi-finalists are clearly dillinestrd by those schools. But as I find comparing these metrics with highly ranked public school districts, the ambiguity in what is considered “National Merit Scholar” is considered to be met merely if the students are “commended” (whatever that even is; I’ve only found technical definitions of semi-finalists and finalists).
Thanks. I did not dis-believe you, but wished to qualify what it was you were describing to ensure we were both describing the same thing. I will look into top Bay Area and Silicon Valkey School districts a bit more to correlate this.
If you look on NMF website (might be the link provided above) you will see that 16k students are semi-finalists and 15k are finalists. To become a finalist you need to take the SAT and get a confirming score, write a short essay and send a transcript. There are a few people who don’t submit these pieces or who do not have SAT/grades to confirm moving on.
SemiFinalist - is based on the state criteria and is Top <1% of test takers in that state. Boarding schools all use the highest state’s number, I believe 221. This qualifies the student for National Merit scholarships at many colleges. This is the number most schools report primarily; they may also give the Commended number.
Finalist - Most SemiFinalists (80-90%) move on to Finalist. This just means they jumped through a couple hoops, like got a recommendation from their school principal and I think met a hurdle with grades.