<p>I absolutely HATE it when GCs and teachers try to claim that test scores are no biggie, your grades matter more, blah blah BLAH</p>
<p>I get that you need both, and test scores aren’t the end all be all. </p>
<p>But, i get frustrated with our guidance telling me that my 34 ACT score won’t make up for being 3rd in my class, that the two kids ahead of me with 2010 and 1980 SAT scores will get in easier…because GRADES mean more</p>
<p>^^ rocket…</p>
<p>Being 3rd in your class is not a negative. And if your GC really thinks so then she should be advocating getting rid of ranking.</p>
<p>And…grades don’t “mean more” - a high test score with a strong GPA (such as yours) will mean more than someone who is tenths of a point higher in GPA, but has just a “good” SAT. Your ACT is in the upper 99 percentile. It’s like 99.8 percentile.</p>
<p>BTW…GPA doesn’t tell everything…someone with a few tenths of a point higher GPA might have taken a less rigorous courseload…such as an easier AP class (one of those AP Lite classes)</p>
<p>And…many educators are verbally dismissive of grades, too. They call kids who care about grades…“grade whore$” (Again, I think these kind of educators were likely mediocre achievers themselves)</p>
<p>Oh…and I hope you get accepted to some dream school and then (politely) shove it in that GC’s face and insist that she justify her previous silly ramblings.</p>
<p>" i get frustrated with our guidance telling me that my 34 ACT score won’t make up for being 3rd in my class, that the two kids ahead of me with 2010 and 1980 SAT scores will get in easier…because GRADES mean more"</p>
<p>Unless your GC is referring to specific public schools that would favor vals and sals with mediocre scores over someone who’s not val, sal, but has excellent grades and scores, your GC doesn’t know what they are talking about.</p>
<p>This is an interesting thread but I have a different perspective I think. My daughter is a senior and first in her class at a large urban high school. The school has about 65% poverty rate. Ever since “No child left behind” has been implemented the emphasis is not on SAT scores but on passing the state tests. It has gotten ridiculous. For example, my daughter for her first three years of high school was tested four times a year on her reading & math skills. She would be pulled from her AP Calculus class to take these tests. I have no ideas if our district has had any finalists in the past couple of years. But last year they did send students to Brown, Pitt & Cornell. </p>
<p>As for the GC saying being #3 is a negative, he’s an idiot. A lot of guidance counselors just push papers and around and try to figure out student schedules. He probably wasn’t close to be #3 in his high school class.</p>
<p>"My daughter is a senior and first in her class at a large urban high school. The school has about 65% poverty rate. Ever since “No child left behind” has been implemented the emphasis is not on SAT scores but on passing the state tests. "</p>
<p>Makes sense to me. Schools with 65% poverty rate tend not to have students who are going to college. If the students are going to college, they tend to head to ones like community colleges or 4-year colleges that have very low average SAT rates.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, such schools may not have been teaching students the fundamentals – the types of things like basic reading and math. The state-mandated tests can cause such schools to take seriously the fact that they are supposed to be teaching students, not just passing them because the students came to school and breathed.</p>
<p>Saying all of this as someone who has taught in college students who came from high poverty schools where the students were top students, but graduated without knowing things like how to write a sentence or how even to compute averages. </p>
<p>Probably the offspring of parents who post on CC don’t need “No Child Behind” testing, but from what I’ve seen, many students do need that testing to help ensure that they learn what schools are supposed to be teaching them. Otherwise, many high schools would be happy to give diplomas that reflect no reputable education.</p>
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<p>Frankly, even before NCLB was implemented schools didn’t put much emphasis on prep for SAT. I don’t have a problem with NCLB, but I would have a problem with my child being pulled out of AP Cal for some kind of tests…Can’t those be done at another time? What the heck!!! Pulling kids out of AP Cal??? Who made that decision? The person should be smacked upside the head!!!</p>
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<p>I completely agree. </p>
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<p>I completely agree with NorthStarMom</p>
<p>Maybe the law should be changed that any kids who are in AP Chem, AP Bio, or AP Cal shouldn’t have to take the NCLB tests, since obviously those kids are leading the pack; they aren’t being left behind! LOL</p>
<p>In our state (Illinois), IIRC, the state tests for juniors include the ACT. Granted, it’s not the SAT, but it’s the equivalent. So all high school students in Illinois are taking the ACT, whether they’re college bound or not. At least that’s my understanding.</p>
<p>At my D’s suburban public high school, everyone takes the PSAT as a junior (and everyone takes the pre-ACT PLAN as a sophomore). This school had 7 national merit semifinalists last year (out of a class of roughly 400). There are a lot of kids at this high school who never take the SAT (ACT being the prevalent test), but they all take the PSAT.</p>
<p>“I don’t have a problem with NCLB, but I would have a problem with my child being pulled out of AP Cal for some kind of tests…Can’t those be done at another time? What the heck!!! Pulling kids out of AP Cal??? Who made that decision? The person should be smacked upside the head!!!”</p>
<p>My experience as a parent has been that all kids in a grade level get the mandated tests at the same time, so the classes they miss are the luck of the draw.</p>
<p>I get that some kids need NCLB to hold them to standards, but our district devotes 18 school days to testing in APRIL. so, for over half the month before all AP tests, we have approximately 18 minute classes.
That makes no sense</p>
<p>I was a NMSF way back in 1974, and frankly, the amount of attention paid to the PSAT is a little ridiculous in my opinion. When I got it, almost nobody in my class got any mail from schools, I was innudated with it, along with calls from alumni. Ultimately, it didn’t really help me to get into the school I really wanted. Yes, standardized test scores are important, but so are grades, extracurriculars, recommendations, just about everything, especially in this hypercompetitive time. It is a nice achievement. But if you get “the big head” from your PSAT score you are likely in for trouble - and that’s easy to do when you’re 16 years old and a bunch of Ivy League schools start treating you like Albert Einstein because you bubbled in a few more correct answers than anybody else. </p>
<p>Taking standardized tests is a skill. I know as someone who enjoys taking these kinds of tests, and who has worked in the test prep industry (Ivy West). I don’t know if it is something you can really be taught to everyone, but it is a skill which involves taking a certain base set of knowledge, and using an ability to eliminate incorrect answers and choose between the remaining alternatives. If you are good at it you can do well on most any general knowledge standardized exam. But you just cant rely on this to carry you through.</p>
<p>This is just my opinion and a cautionary tale about putting to much emphasis in any area of accomplishment grades, exams, etc. And particularly the PSAT, because aside from merit scholarships, I just think the SAT is much more important, and there is always the risk that a kid will let their SAT/ACT prep, or any other area of their application suffer because they did so well on the PSAT. But heck, after reading the stats profiles on here, most of the kids seem incredibly well rounded and accomplished in many ways.</p>
<p>“I don’t have a problem with NCLB, but I would have a problem with my child being pulled out of AP Cal for some kind of tests…Can’t those be done at another time? What the heck!!! Pulling kids out of AP Cal??? Who made that decision? The person should be smacked upside the head!!!”</p>
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<p>Oh, I totally understand the need for the tests to be done at the same time, but where I have lived (in Calif and in Alabama) schools don’t have regular classes on the days of standardized testing - so no one is “pulled out” or misses a class lecture because of testing. </p>
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<p>What the heck??? 18 days of testing? That is so unnecessary! And, if it has to be this way, why not have fewer classes meet each day rather than have silly 18 minute classes? And, this happens right before AP exams? Crazy! I’m sure the kids have “test fatigue” after the 4th or 5th day of testing, so what’s the point!!</p>
<p>I really think some educators need to have their heads examined - to see if they still have functioning brains! These crazy decisions! It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out a better way to do these things. OK…now I’ll tell you how I really feel. :)</p>
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<p>Yeah, once the state changed the school calendar, the state TAKS tests are the two weeks right before the exams. So no class when the AP students could reallly use it.</p>
<p>I was shocked to see the data because the result wasn’t even to close to the proverbial 80/20 spread. If the result had followed the 80/20 model, then 80% of the NMSF’s would be concentrated in 20% of the high schools, and the remaining 20% of the NMSF’s would be sprinkled in 80% of the high schools. If that were the case, I won’t be surprised. In fact, I won’t even be surprised if it were 95/5. But we are not seeing just a case of high concentration of NMSF’s in a few schools, we are seeing a case of ZERO NMSF’s in 80% of the participating high schools. ZERO. I suspect if we exclude singularities – schools with 100+ seniors and just one NMSF – the number would be even more alarming. This is not just a case of concentration, this is a case of exclusion.</p>
<p>The statements I made about grades inflation, poor education, and PSAT scores track SAT scores apply in the context of aggregates and averages, they do not apply to individual students or even individual schools. I’m certainly not shocked that there should be a high school with 1000+ seniors and not one NMSF, but I am shocked that 80% (17,400) of the high schools don’t even have a single NMSF. Something is very wrong.</p>
<p>Paper Charer You are clearly living in a rarified world. Your post is so very ignorant of the realities of education in the United States and so terribly arrogant that there is likely very little point in trying to make you understand.</p>
<p>just know that I am a high school teacher in a rural public with a student population of under 500. Only very rarely does one of our students earn NMSF or NMF. This same school has educated exceedingly bright, wonderful and community orriented people who have gone on to do great things and attend top 20 colleges and universities. We have no grade inflation we are the only show in town so what’s the point? </p>
<p>You don’t insiuate you flat out say that we are doing a poor job educating our kids. We all beg to differ.</p>
<p>historymom, as I said in my last post, my statements do not apply to any individual school. </p>
<p>I know schools with no NMSF’s can still be good schools providing excellent education, but I’m not convinced that we can say this to the majority of the 80%. Btw, high schools with no NMSF’s do not preclude their alums from having successful careers or doing great things. I never said or implied otherwise.</p>
<p>well, with the cutoffs being so high in some states, MANY schools will not have a NMSF. Our school had district had none last year or the year before, our cut off is 218 +/-. D grade had 15 kids JUST under the cutoff out of 200 kids. Skip over a state or two they would have all been NMSF.</p>
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<p>the reality is even worse than this. The cutoff for NMSF is different for different states. If a uniform standard were to be used, the real distribution may be something like 90% (I am guessing) of the high schools with zero NMSF student.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop, I’m not sure where you live. In our region, we have a large number of rural high schools with 50 to 80 students in the graduating class. It’s not too surprising that it’s rare for one of the students in those schools to make it into the top 1% on the PSAT. We also have larger urban schools, where NMSF’s are rare. The local suburban public school typically has 16 NMSF’s in a class of 400. Some of the families are pretty well off. But some families with high-school age children move to apartments in the suburban public school district, so that their children can go there. Others, who do not live in the suburban school district, use the option (available in our state) to transport their children into other districts, to the school where they would like them to go. So the school takes talented students from a broader region–although it is not a magnet school in the normal sense.</p>
<p>PaperChaserPop, do you understand that the number of NMSFs is LIMITED? That the distribution of them is not and cannot be uniform, given the way NMSFs are determined? That some states have extremely high cut-offs for NMSF status, and some much lower cut-offs? </p>
<p>If the population of NMSFs is held to a number that is below the number of high schools currently in the country – and it is – you cannot possibly get a NMSF in each school, ever. If the population of NMSFs is determined by different standards in every state – and it is – you cannot make a blanket statement about the number of NMSFs in this or that or the other, or even the majority, of high schools, because a kid who would NOT qualify in Maryland is in Maryland and that kid may very well have qualified if he lived in West Virginia.</p>
<p>You seem to not understand at all the data set with which you are trying to work, and are trying to bend in in a direction it simply doesn’t go.</p>
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The title “National Merit” is really a misnomer. It should be “State Merit.” When I hear about someone being a NMF, I try to find out which state they are from. It makes a difference to me!</p>