@mathyone My wife was a semi-finalist in the late 1980s. It was the first time any one from her school had ever been a finalist, and the guidance counselor had no idea what to do. She did not apply to be a finalist, and may or may not have qualified anyway, as she was going to a two-year IB boarding school for her senior and post-grad year. They make allowances for this now, but don’t know if they did back then. (I think they told the kids they were semifinalists in their junior year back then).
We were talking about this to our son last night. For people who didn’t know what to do, there was no Internet to go to… And so yes, a lot of people did slip through the cracks.
I can see A LOT of kids skipping the PSAT on a Saturday morning in October, even kids that are on the college track. Football/Soccer/Cheerleading, etc… will always win on the priority list for kids (and many parents too). I can’t imagine a varsity football player (even a smart one on a college track) would skip a game in October to take a ‘practice’ SAT. Most kids and parents (even in the highly educated New England area) do not know about National Merit Scholarship, or they only hear about it AFTER the test. Before the PSAT sitting in October, even our college counselors diminished the importance of the PSAT score by saying that the PSAT score only really matters for a select few students (although they encouraged all kids to take it, for practice).
I’m actually surprised they don’t force weekday testing on a regular basis. This would help students get a feel for the SAT and maybe pique the interest of those smarter, less motivated kids, if they take it and do reasonably well.
I’m going to grouse on behalf of us DC folks. Last year we had 44 NMSFs. 40 of those came from expensive private schools that border on Maryland and have fewer than half of their students living in DC. 1/3rd were from Sidwell Friends, the school where the Obamas and Clintons sent their kids. In total, I would be surprised if 1/3rd of the NMSFs from DC actually live in the District. This wouldn’t be quite such a big deal except for the fact that the National Merit folks protect kids in the New England states from having to face similar competition by non-resident private school students. Boarding schools that “enroll a sizable proportion of their students from outside the state in which the school is located” are lumped into their own category to prevent those high scoring students from adversely affecting the chances of local students. The NMSC says they compensate DC by giving us more NMSFs than we deserve, but that seems like small compensation when we still always tie for the highest cutoff in the country. It seems like the NMSC could, instead of having a “Boarding School” category, have a “Non-resident” school category for all schools that “enroll a sizable proportion of their students from outside the state in which the school is located.”
" I can’t imagine a varsity football player (even a smart one on a college track) would skip a game in October to take a ‘practice’ SAT." Our football games are on Fridays. And kids in ECs who cannot miss a Saturday competition could arrange to test during the week at another site.
I know nothing about football (other than the fact that it is typically on Friday nights.) I would say that outside of a family emergency, testing is the only permitted reason for missing a cross country practice or meet during the fall season. Our coach’s motto is school first, running second, the rest of your life if there is time left over.
We have some football games on Saturdays here in New England!
Its great that they are now offering it on weekdays going forward. Again, not sure how this changes the numbers from Class of 2016 (no weekday) to Class of 2017 and forward (on weekday)…we shall see.
Another way to look at the scores is to consider the plight of the students from states where the schools are so bad that they can’t really compete with students educated in decent places. Time for a change!
“@GMTplus7 And now you know why I made the case for a Maryland to Mississippi move about 10 years ago. Clearly, DC or VA were not an improvement in this regard.”
Really, you’d prefer to be educated or to have your offspring educated in a school system so bad the kids learn very little? Wouldn’t it be better to be educated in a decent school system where students learn, even if it means you lose out on , what is it, a few thousand a year while in college? I think it is a travesty that we have states where so few kids learn what they are capable of learning. We need our future generations to be as prepared to contribute to the world as possible. Stretch them now (as opposed to handing out A’s for being good at licking stamps).
Chiming in from ND here, where supposedly all it takes is to breathe to make the cut . . .
All high school juniors take the ACT because that is the test required by ND, SD, and MN schools. PSAT is completely elective–or up to parent pressure.
This tri-state region is also known for its low percentage of geographic mobility. Some kids certainly are interested in attending school on either coast, but the more are often satisfied with the high quality of life in the upper midwest and don’t look beyond the regional universities.
@GMTplus7 thanks for the chart… If we know roughly how many NMSF’s were awarded last year by state, we could just assume the same amount awarded this year( assuming the same proportional rate as per your chart) so assume TX will have 1353 NMSF’s like last time. If we could SOMEHOW get the juniors who took the test to post their SI’s then we can sort out the highest scores to get to the state cut-off. Do this for every state! It won’t be exact but it will give us an idea instead of wait till sept. The tough part is how do we reach out to get to juniors to post their scores? I don’t have a social media account LOL!
@EarlVanDorn I was a National Merit Semifinalist from my public high school in Mississippi (Forest Hill High School in Jackson) in 1981. I was also the STAR Student from my school. In fact, that year we had four National Merit Finalists which is probably the most that school had ever had. We also had one additional National Achievement Scholar. Later, when I went to Cornell, I met other Finalists from the Northeast and we compared cutoff scores by state. They could not believe the low cutoff score of Mississippi (I believe it was 180 in that year). Other states like CT had cutoffs of 203 or higher.
What they did not understand was the truly limited resources of the public school systems there. No test prep services at that time. No internet. Libraries didn’t have any test prep material. We were truly on our own as the school didn’t provide any guidance other than tell us when the exam was going to be held. Many of us just “walked in cold.”
Once I got to Cornell, it was a truly a level playing field. A lot of those top students from the Northeast with their high SAT scores revealed themselves to be not really top students after all. It only took the first tests in the first semester to sort all that out.
@billchu2 It all goes to show you standardized tests do not indicate academic success in college. Academic success in high school is the best indicator.
@billchu2 If you are from Mississippi you know the type of private school I attended. A lot of these kids have traditionally done just fine in English, but Math? Forget it! And unlike you, they have often found themselves woefully unprepared for college.
DC’s number is fair if you don’t consider that the elite high schools in the district serve large numbers of out of state kids. Most years the majority of kids who get NMF “from” DC don’t live in DC, and almost none attend public schools.
My son’s varsity football team played on Saturday afternoon game all season (everything else was Friday night or Saturday). I was curious why, and then the coach sent out an email “If you’re taking the SAT tomorrow morning, please ask a teammate to put your stuff on the bus so you can meet us at the game”. So here, at least, football schedules around the SAT, not vice versa.
I think we all agree that there are a number of factors impacting the state cutoffs with school quality and test prep as two significant factors. However, I have no doubt that the number of test takers in a state is one of the factors as well.
Clearly, we don’t know the population of test takers, but simple logic tells me that if one state mandates all HS juniors take a test and another state makes it optional and only a quarter of the students elect to take it, the State with the 100 percent of test takers will have a higher cutoff.
I know this is anecdotal, but last year, my son was the only NMSF in his high school out of 450 in his class. It is ranked sixth best HS in Missouri by US News and World Report. He scored a 35 on his ACT and knows of five other students who did as well. Three of the five never took the PSAT. One parent commented to me after hearing about my son’s award that it would have been nice to know that the PSAT had any importance. Despite the internet, not everyone is informed.
One other interesting (and final) comparison between the Mass and MO results is comparing the percent of test takers who achieved commended or NMSF. I think the commended cutoff last year was 202. 4.5% of Mass test takers and 5.6% of MO test takers achieved a 202 or higher. This would indicate that high achievers in MO were self selecting to take the test, but comparing across states is still apple to oranges because not all high achievers are going to sign up for any number of reasons. The only valid comparison would be if all students were required to take the test.
Lastly, I don’t care if Mass has higher PSAT scores than Missouri. I just want the Chiefs to beat the Pats on Saturday. It’s going to be tough. Brady is almost unbeatable in the playoffs.