You are absolutely correct! MA & MO have roughly that same state population ~6 million people, so I will assume they have roughly the same number of graduatting seniors.
But as u point out, MA has 4x as many students as MO taking the test for the equivalent 328 number of slots. I think that that’s the issue that is emerging from my table in post #10. The blue 41% ratio for MA is about a quarter of the 187% ratio for MO. MA has a heckuva lot more kids chasing the same number of slots as MO.
Should’ve moved to Wyoming when there was a chance 
Besides U Wy tuition is the lowest. A bit windy though.
This is making me all the more nervous about being from Massachusetts 
For what it’s worth, the reason some states have so few ( or zero) commended students is due to the small difference between the commended cutoff and the Semifinalist cutoff in that state. If the NMSF cutoff score in a state is the same as the Commended cutoff (yes it happens), then that state will not have any commended students. If the NMSF score is only one or two points above the Commended cutoff, then there will be very few Commended students. On the other hand, if a state has a high NMSF cutoff, then there will be many Commended students (those scoring above the Commended cutoff but below the high NMSF cutoff) in that state.
@aron Well, it was a slight factor for us, but I am from the county north of where I now live. But my daughter could have gotten a merit scholarship to boarding school, and we just decided the NMSF was more important.
I think people start to hate to hear this, but if you haven’t been in the Grove before and even during a football game, you’ve missed the meaning of life! It’s really great. My kids aren’t looking at Ole Miss right now because we live here, but that may change.
" MA has a heckuva lot more kids chasing the same number of slots as MO." It doesn’t make sense to look at this because you don’t know anything about the populations taking the test. All the kids in our school are taking the test and they aren’t “chasing” anything. Many of them don’t even know why they are taking it, many of them aren’t headed to a 4 year college, or to any college at all, or even to a high school diploma (!) and some of them will christmas tree it. How does this change anything for the students who are trying to excel–and yes, we have plenty of those in our state?
@GMTplus7 Great charts. So for CA, would it be accurate to say that if there were 100 kids who are commended, around top 30% of those kids who are commended will be NMSFs? That means since CA has around 2,000+ NMSFs each year, there will be around 6,000 kids who are commended from CA. Which means once we find out the SI score cutoff for commendation (same national SI score), we should be able to take a good guess at the cutoff SI score for CA.
When I think of “football”, I think of the real football – soccer. Lol
You take everything so literally. I simply meant there is a large ratio of kids taking the test compared to the allocated number of NMSF slots for that state.
@Barfly A few years ago Mississippi had only one commended score, I think 203. What a sad honor! But for most years prior to that, there were no commended students.in Mississippi because the NMSF cut took them all in.
I’m fairly certain that when I was declared a "Commended Student 37 years ago there was no such thing as state cutoffs. Because if there had been, Mississippi wouldn’t have had “Commended” students – they all would have been NMSF. I’d love for them to go back and “posthumously” grant some of these awards!
@GMTplus7 Thanks for the work. I think the comparison between Mass and Missouri is VERY VERY helpful in summarizing how the entire NMF process works:
“Mass & MO have roughly that same state population ~6 million people, so I will assume they have roughly the same number of graduating seniors. But as u point out, MA has 4x as many students as MO taking the test for the equivalent 328 number of slots.”
Since the test was taken on a weekday this year, that stat should change in all states, but more pronounced in states where a lot of kids previously didn’t show up for the test. Likely this won’t affect cutoffs, however, because those kids will probably not score high enough to make a difference.
I wonder if the test being held on a school day rather than weekend will make much of a difference in the high cutoff states. Presumably, the kids who didn’t show for the weekend test were less motivated and/or less prepared, and therefore, probably not in the running.
I think a greater impact will be felt in the low cutoff states which previously had a low turnout, i.e. those states towards the bottom of the table in post#10. I predict those states’ cutoffs will rise substantially.
Guess what? Some states have better education systems and students with higher average intelligences than others. And I don’t mean South Dakota versus Massachusetts… I mean Virginia and NJ, for example. Unfortunately, that’s just part of the game.
As with any shift in a bell curve caused by linearization, the highs will come down, while the lows will increase… that’s how linearization works. Basic statistics.
Just a sense check of whether the # of NMSF per state really reflects the # of graduating seniors in the state…
I don’t have the data for the actual number of graduating seniors, so I will make the assumption that it is roughly proportional to the population of the state. So, here is a comparison, sorted on column 1:
Legend for data columns:
** 0.6 ** / 93 / 2,890,845 / Nevada
** 0.8 ** / 777 / 20,271,272 / Florida
** 0.8 ** / 194 / 4,896,146 / SouthCarolina
** 0.8 ** / 84 / 2,085,109 / NewMexico
** 0.9 ** / 317 / 7,170,351 / Washington
** 0.9 ** / 173 / 3,911,338 / Oklahoma
** 0.9 ** / 207 / 4,670,724 / Louisiana
** 0.9 ** / 453 / 10,214,860 / Georgia
** 0.9 ** / 26 / 586,107 / Wyoming
** 0.9 ** / 448 / 10,042,802 / NorthCarolina
** 0.9 ** / 136 / 2,992,333 / Mississippi
** 0.9 ** / 248 / 5,456,574 / Colorado
** 0.9 ** / 35 / 756,927 / NorthDakota
** 0.9 ** / 390 / 8,382,993 / Virginia
** 0.9 ** / 318 / 6,828,065 / Arizona
** 0.9 ** / 227 / 4,858,979 / Alabama
** 0.9 ** / 209 / 4,425,092 / Kentucky
** 0.9 ** / 68 / 1,431,603 / Hawaii
** 1.0 ** / 88 / 1,844,128 / WestVirginia
** 1.0 ** / 41 / 858,469 / SouthDakota
** 1.0 ** / 194 / 4,028,977 / Oregon
** 1.0 ** / 328 / 6,794,422 / Massachusetts
** 1.0 ** / 80 / 1,654,930 / Idaho
** 1.0 ** / 321 / 6,619,680 / Indiana
** 1.0 ** / 323 / 6,600,299 / Tennessee
** 1.0 ** / 1353 / 27,469,114 / Texas
** 1.0 ** / 51 / 1,032,949 / Montana
** 1.0 ** / 178 / 3,590,886 / Connecticut
** 1.0 ** / 47 / 945,934 / Delaware
** 1.0 ** / 149 / 2,978,204 / Arkansas
** 1.0 ** / 151 / 2,995,919 / Utah
** 1.0 ** / 1012 / 19,795,791 / NewYork
** 1.0 ** / 656 / 12,802,503 / Pennsylvania
** 1.0 ** / 98 / 1,896,190 / Nebraska
** 1.0 ** / 2027 / 39,144,818 / California
** 1.1 ** / 39 / 738,432 / Alaska
** 1.1 ** / 154 / 2,911,641 / Kansas
** 1.1 ** / 318 / 6,006,401 / Maryland
** 1.1 ** / 56 / 1,056,298 / RhodeIsland
** 1.1 ** / 618 / 11,613,423 / Ohio
** 1.1 ** / 71 / 1,330,608 / NewHampshire
** 1.1 ** / 328 / 6,083,672 / Missouri
** 1.1 ** / 699 / 12,859,995 / Illinois
** 1.1 ** / 176 / 3,123,899 / Iowa
** 1.1 ** / 310 / 5,489,594 / Minnesota
** 1.2 ** / 78 / 1,329,328 / Maine
** 1.2 ** / 588 / 9,922,576 / Michigan
** 1.2 ** / 540 / 8,958,013 / NewJersey
** 1.2 ** / 348 / 5,771,337 / Wisconsin
** 1.3 ** / 42 / 626,042 / Vermont
** 1.7 ** / 57 / 672,228 / DistrictofColumbia
Except for Nevada & D.C., the number of NMSF allocated to each state seems reasonably fair. Nevada has too few, and DC has a generous number.
We currently live in a state where in our entire county in 2014 there was only one NMSF and in 2015 there were 2. That is out of at least 15 high schools and in the one of the most affluent areas in this part of the state.
The next county over, a more urban area, had 21 last yr. The state’s math and science school only had 1.
All states’ education systems are not equal. I think that is the purpose of awarding by state.Those low number cutoff states’ students are high achieving for the education they have received.
(And this state definitely does not have a university system like CA.)
@GMTplus7 the DC ratio is inflated by the fact that a lot of those kids are commuting in from MD/VA and attending DC schools.
@GMTplus7 @mathyone I think mathyone has already made this point, but adding more test-takers doesn’t necessarily make the test more competitive. In most states, all of the kids with a chance to make the cut take the test. When I took it they pulled 10 of us out of a class of 28 in my private school to take it. We were not given any advance notice of the test.
In Mississippi there is a honor called STAR Student going to the student with the highest ACT in a school, minimum of 25. Many school districts each year do not have a STAR Student, i.e., in the entire school no senior made a 25 or higher. Every junior in Mississippi takes the ACT. We have a few school districts with an average score below 14 and a good many with an average below 16. The fact is you could add about 50,000 kids to the test pool and not make it a bit more “competitive.” (And yes, schools with super-low averages COULD have some super-high-scorers, but they don’t).
Mississippi has had a 75 percent graduation rate, but they just abolished exit exams, which is going to increase it. That will mean a few more awards for those on the top end in a year or two.
When we were young, I’m sure that many kids who might have qualified simply didn’t take the PSAT. They probably didn’t know about it if their school was not a testing site. These days with the internet and with far more widespread testing, it’s hard to believe that there are kids who would qualify who aren’t taking it because they simply didn’t know about it. I’m sure there are a few who miss testing because it’s not convenient for them to test, or they were unaware of the scholarship potential, but unless there are still areas where you would have to travel a long distance to test (not sure about this, maybe in a place like Alaska?) there are unlikely to be enough of these students to significantly affect the percentile cutoffs. So the competitiveness is based on the graduating student population, as it should be, since the purpose is to identify and reward the top high school graduates in the state, not the top students who sat for the exam. You can easily have huge swings in the number of students sitting for the exam as states add and drop testing requirements and this shouldn’t make much difference to the scholarship program.
The fact that you’re getting Divided by zero errors suggest that your analysis is faulty. You should be using raw data for calculations, not rounded percentages.