<p>I posted before also in a separate thread that is there any correlation between National Merit Semifinalist Status and admission to HYPMSC. But everyone bashed me hard. But after going thru this year matriculation from my D’s school and the NM semifinalist’s status I found that everyone matriculating to HYPMC is NM semifinalists while only Stanford has Commended NM and non NM (Most likely legacy). </p>
<p>So my feeling is that getting NM semifinalist’s status may not get you admission into HYPMSC but not getting might prevent it. It applies to schools that get many NM semifinalists.</p>
<p>POIH, it’s not because of NMS but because these students are strong students in the first place. Just like my D school, the ones that got into all the HYPMS, most got strong SAT scores, some near 2400 but they also got very strong GPAs(nobody get straight As here). So here is the question , is the strong SAT scores cause these students to be admitted at HYPMS or these students got admitted to HYPMS because they are very strong students, the academic “ones”. I think it’s the later. I think it’s similar explanation with NMS.</p>
<p>This is stupid. Not being a NM Semifinalist does not prevent you from getting into a good school. Some people do not take the PSAT as juniors and still end up getting into schools like MIT.</p>
<p>Of course there’s a correlation, how could there not be. Some kids go on to do better on the SAT than the PSAT, but there’s a strong correlation there too.</p>
<p>At my daughter’s school, many of the kids accepted to HYPMC were not NM semifinalists and, conversely, not all of the NM semifinalists were accepted at those schools, so I don’t see any specific correlation.</p>
<p>I agree with other posters that generally kids that do well on the PSATs are strong students who wind up with good SAT scores and thus get into good schools.</p>
<p>Although I think it could help, most kids in my school don’t get national merit. Actually, this year we only had one and shes not going to an ivy or a school really of that level. On the other hand, there are a few kids off to Cornell and one of to Yale so, I just thought I’d throw that out there. I mean, I don’t have any mass numbers but still.</p>
<p>I think it is important to know that it might make sense when the school has 30% student getting NM semifinalists. In that case I think not being 1 of those 30% might put you to great disadvantage. With another 24% getting the commended status I’ve not seen any top school recruiting anyone outside of these two group unless it was legacy.</p>
because I think colleges compare kids within the same school. Colleges always like to take the top 10% of each high school. Colleges may dip a little lower(maybe 15-20%) for a very competitive high school but not more. But I don’t think you can tie that to NMS. What if the kid is sick that day? I know some kids didn’t take PSAT in 11th grade.</p>
<p>15% of the class matriculated to HYPMSC, which is well below the 30% NM Semifinalists. So indeed not becoming NM Semifinalists will be a great disadvantage.</p>
<p>Hmmm. At my school, for the class of 2006 none of the people who went to “good” colleges (by CC standards) actually were NM semifinalists. And we had 8 that year.</p>
<p>TooRichForAid: My D school don’t rank, so I think this might be an indirect way to calculate rank.
Also everyone matriculating to other Ivies are either NM Semifinalists or Commended only. Which might be possible as 55% of the class is in that category.</p>
<p>POIH, Please go get some books on college admissions, there are ways for colleges to compute even if high school don’t rank. No, I think it does not tie to NMS. My D school has 40-50 NMS and not that many people got into HYPMS because not sure if those people have the stats to apply. I mean the people that applied are self-selected.</p>
<p>TooRichForAid : Can you suggest some good books? I’m nervous as every body on this board says that it is not the number game but when I look at my D’s school matriculation it doesn’t seem anything else.
You loose one thing and you are out of race.</p>