https://www.google.com/amp/s/patch.com/washington/spokane/amp/27259527/spokane-national-merit-scholarship-semifinalists-announced list for WA state. Kinda annoying how I found my name on a random website BEFORE the school told me anything but oh well. Also, my school is the only one in the district with any nmsf and there are only 2 others in the whole city which is insane.
I get why they do NMSF by state. Looking at the list for mine I can already see massive inequalities between different areas of my state and different areas of my city. I can only imagine if those inequalities were spread across the entire country.
LASA Local Austin magnit school just announced that the have 39 semi finalists out of a class size of about 250.
@snowfairy137 Agreed. The reason they do it by state is that the inequalities would be larger if they went to a national cutoff. Imagine what the list would look like if the the national cutoff was 219 or 220. Up to half the states in the country would have zero NMSF for the whole state. CA’s numbers would skyrocket. So would the other high cutoff states.
There are flaws in the current system for sure, but I’m not sure what I would suggest to make it better.
^That’s what I just said??
I’m agreeing with you. 
I’ll edit to make it clearer.
^^^LASA always has a lot!
@crazy4info I guess schools that get to “pick” which students can attend will all have higher numbers than regular public schools.
That is true, but to my earlier point, that is only part of it. Plenty of other schools “pick” their students, and always have. The distinction is the increase in schools that seem to select on a narrowing criteria, and with a specific goal: superior standardized test scores.
Consider my thoughts unrefined at this point, but that’s my rationale for the continued concentration we seem to see.
Here’s Nevada’s list:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B-HKR5b64A7pVjBGT1l5Z3NZMEU/view?usp=sharing
I highly doubt that half the states would have 0 nmsfs with a cutoff of 219.
Well, if you go to Art’s and sort last year’s results from highest to lowest, 36 states would not have had a single NMSF if there had been a national cutoff at 219.
Remember, these are last year’s numbers. This year, the vast majority of the cutoffs were higher.
222 = 3 states, plus US students living abroad (DC, MA, NJ)
221 = 3 states (CA, MA, VA)
220 = 3 states (CT, TX, WA)
219 = 6 states (15 states total at 219 and above - AZ, GA, IL, MN, NY, OR)
218 = 5 states (CO, DE, NC, PA, TN)
217 = 6 states (26 states at 217 and above, so the midpoint is roughly here - FL, HI, IN, KS, OH, RI)
EDIT: DUR!!! Yes, I’m misinterpreting how a national cutoff would play out. 30 whacks with a rolled up newspaper. To wit: just because a state has a cutoff of 215 doesn’t mean that there are no students who scored higher than 219. I’m leaving the numbers of states breakdowns because I still find them interesting.
@DiotimaDM the cutoff is the lowest someone could score and make it from a state. Someone who scores at the cutoff or above makes it. For example, my DS scored 219 when KY’s cutoff is 217. He makes it, a student who has 217 makes it, and a student who has 226 makes it. Just because the state has a cutoff of 211 doesn’t mean they don’t have scorers who scored significantly above 211.
@3scoutsmom, There are certain public schools (not magnets or charters) where I live in California that have dozens of kids as NMSF, and certainly way more than the private schools around here. They’re in an affluent area with a high number of Asian families, many of whom are in the IT field. There’s no selective picking of these students.
[QUOTE=""]
36 states would not have had a single NMSF if there had been a national cutoff at 219.
[/QUOTE]
I think they just wouldn’t have had proportional representation in the population of NMSF’s. Kids in states with cutoffs lower than 219 could still be selected if they scored 219 or higher.
@LOUKYDAD Yep. This is a hypothetical discussion about what might happen if the cutoff were national instead of by state.
Edit: See my DERP disclaimer detailed above. 
States with lower cut-offs would still have some representation among the 16k I imagine. It would just be less than proportional, far less for some states.
We have to interpolate data in the range in order to guess what the national cut off number would be. (I have guessed previously it could be as high as 221, most think lower). There are clues that will help with this interpolation but it will not be perfect nor easy.
While it is unlikely that a state would have 0 SFs, it IS ABSOLUTELY POSSIBLE they would not. And it is CERTAIN you could count them on your hands and toes for the smaller states like WY, ND, SD, etc.
When the dust settles, I plan to take a stab at doing this for the 2018 class. The data is out there to attempt it for prior classes. If you have a moment, look at the national 2016 numbers to see just how many CA kids made it vs. Wyoming. Consider … several states have NO commended students … because their state SF cut off aligns with the commended cut off. Now, take the range of possible scores, divide by SFs, account for a diminishing tail … etc etc
deleted
I encourage folks to read prior years’ “National Merit Scholarship Corporation Annual Report”. Interesting information in those.