<p>I’d say native intelligence (genetic), parents’ education level/high expectations, type of school that values academic achievement, test prep.</p>
<p>Of course highly intelligent kids are likely to come from highly intelligent, educated parents who are more likely to have professional, high paying jobs, (which tend to be in urban areas) which enable them to pay for private education or supplement public education. . .they are more likely to know about NM program and encourage test prep/high achievement. They are more likely to seek out the best schools for their kids because they value education and thus cluster with others who are similarly educated, professional, wealthy, like minded. So, no surprise that a lot of their kids end up in the same schools and become NMSFs.</p>
<p>This is one short multiple choice test taken on one day by a percentage of students in the country. This is what you’re going to use to evaluate the state of the US educational system?</p>
<p>Aargh- all the complaining from parents with higher state score cutoffs in many threads. Think about it- you are from the states where SATs are emphasized, people spend a lot of money for private schools, people do massive test prep, take the PSAT as sophomores… One reason the NATIONAL scholarship program has different score levels for different states is to level the playing field so the qualifiers represent the whole country and not degenerate into a regional phenomenon with scholarship sponsors dropping out. Remember that NMS is merely the clearing house as it were for all sorts of companies and institutions to use in finding students to give their scholarships to.</p>
<p>To really level the playing field all students should come with the same preparation. Stop spending money on prep courses, only take the test once as a junior, support your public schools and use them… You could choose to live in a less stressful/competitive area. Consider all of the benefits weighed against the cons. Finally- ask yourself this- would your child have gotten as high a score if you had lived elsewhere? In other words- would your child have missed the cutoff if s/he had the same education as those in a lower cutoff state? Probably.</p>
<p>This is a private scholarship competition. It is prestigious partly because it is used nationwide for scholarships. Many states use it in determining merit aid. I might add some corporations also use NMS to determine their company scholarship winners- they have different score criteria.</p>
<p>Those of you on the east coast- don’t worry about the rest of our kids taking your elite ivy league school spots- they don’t try to get representation on a nationwide population basis. End of rant. </p>
<p>I was a NMS, son a NMS finalist- I needed, he did not need, the money. H’s cousin in CA was a NMS (H not in US for HS). Son and son’s cousin had identical PSAT scores (different subscores) taken in different midwest states and years (and ages since son was ahead of his agemates gradewise). The cousin had better grades and is also a NMS. Genetics and family attitudes towards education (I’m the outlier in my side of son’s family- no one else as academic). In our area no one seems to know/care much about NMS- there are not always NMS but often commended students. I know I wanted my gifted son to achieve the same academic landmarks (actually exceed them) that I did. btw- I think we all had scores that would have gotten us to semifinalist in any state.</p>
<p>I also know what became of honors program college friends who were/were not NMSs (as well as those who chose to do/not do the required senior honors thesis work). Relax parents- there is a life of achievement, or not, for your kids regardless of whether or not they get this HS distinction. There are other sources of money for college, too. Yes, it is a nice HS award to have in your memories and is good on the cv, but so many do as much or more than those who were finalists. I might add the same goes for those who attend the most prestigious colleges- there are many from the rest of the schools who go far beyond them (think- many/most only get a bachelor’s degree even at the top schools).</p>
<p>Too many years of hearing the same complaints, every so often I choose to vent.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids notes,ometimes when a parent has asked if his/her “straight A” child would likely get a college scholarship, I’ve politely asked if his/her standardized test scores reflect the top percentiles ( 95+ percentiles). Usually the answer is “no”…often the reality is that their “top student” is scoring in the 60-70 percentile - not usually high enough for any merit $$$. </p>
<p>This usually “opens the parents’s eyes” and makes them realize that their child’s school is not as “difficult” as they once imagined."</p>
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<p>Response: I have taught the SAT for many years. There are a HUGE number of kids who were REALLY sharp, attended a great high school, had a super GPA in high school that still bombed the SATs or PSATs. Having a lower number of National Merit folks doesn’t mean that the high school is weak or that there is a lot of grade inflation involved.</p>
<p>It’s interesting reading about the different districts and the attitude toward the PSAT. In our public, the PSAT is free and open to freshmen, sophmores and juniors. Our senior who is currently a NMSF, took the test the first two years as prep and saw his scores increase as expected. Our public also has a math and an English teacher who conduct prep sessions (25 max students) during the Fall and the Spring. </p>
<p>S2 who is a sophmore, is taking the PSAT next Wednesday for the second time in preparation for next year’s grand finale.</p>
<p>HS junior D1 took the PSAT for the first time in 8th (!) grade, and every year since. It was given for free by the (public) school. The school where D1 went in 8th grade is where D2 attends, but they no longer give the test to 8th graders. Or at least that’s what I think; D2 is not always the most reliable delivery system of school communications </p>
<p>I was NMF back in the day and got nothing, not even the $1k. If D1 make the cutoff (not expecting it, but YNK), it would be nice, but not a financial killer if she doesn’t. There are one or two schools which she’s interested in where there might be slightly more NMF money, but even that’s a tossup.</p>
<p>The fact that NMS doesn’t yield the same $$ value that it may have two or three decades ago is probably also a factor in the lack of growth of the program. It is entirely possible that instead of wondering how to get “more” merit scholars the entire concept might be turned on it’s head to make the “value” of the award more to colleges. Although the unis that offer a full ride to the scholars is a might attractive carrot for many families. For the student that is at the top of his or her game and shooting for the uber selectives that have very attractive financial packaging for the right kid or families that are planning on paying full boat anyway the NM scholarship program could very well take a back seat.</p>
<p>re. this thread and the private school thread:</p>
<p>It wasn’t too surprising to me that my niece’s exclusive private school has 24 commended students and 15 NMF this year. These students had to take a standardized test for admission and only those scoring at the tippy-top were admitted. I am also not surprised they are accepted to very competitive colleges. (I liked the basketball camp comparison very much!)</p>
<p>On the other hand neither was I surprised when my son, who at that time enjoyed any and all standardized tests as a sort of puzzle solving activity and seemed to be using various approaches which decoded the test but which I never understood (or cared much to try to understand), was a NMF… though I didn’t really think about it till reading this thread that he may have been the first at his public in a while since they neglected to include his name and designation when they reported the commended students-- usually 2 or 3 annually and treated as a very big deal. We thought maybe they didn’t really understand it mattered and just laughed. </p>
<p>OTOH another child who hated the tests and rarely managed to get both his name and address coded correctly did manage a decent enough SAT and GRE to get into his top choice college/grad school. </p>
<p>my children, from the same sort of background as my niece, weren’t handicapped in college admissions by public school. They couldn’t have fared better in that regard with private school – though obviously (at least to me) that isn’t the total measure of a successful secondary education.</p>
<p>well no, to be fair you didn’t come out and say it but when you said…</p>
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<p>you implied an either/or situation for the many high schools that do not have a solid record of NMFs. By extension and process of elimination; since my school has no grade inflation our students must be receiving a “poor quality education” My post was to illustrate that, in addition to being statistically more likely, not having a NMF is not a condemnation of a school or the education it provides. </p>
<p>To be even more fair, I also wanted to point out that your post smacked of elitism.</p>
<p>Done, done and done. No state is monolithic. There is nothing about our HS which is anything like what you describe. Public HS, no prep courses. Title ONe school. But we still have the same state cutoff.</p>
<p>I grew up in a small town, but attended a “District” HS which was quite large. We always had a few NMSF’s in each class and an occasional Finalist. This seems to still happen in this school (I get a newspaper from that area). And this is in a state with a high cutoff score.</p>
<p>By the way, I noticed a few comments regarding socioeconomic status in rural areas. It is a lot more diverse than many people believe. I grew up in a town of 4,000 people and knew several educated (some Ivy) professionals.</p>
<p>1) I have noticed the scholarships available on FastWeb are by and large essay-writing contests, which are of no help to my NMSF but not hugely gifted in writing son. </p>
<p>The PSAT tests another kind of ability, and to do well it is necessary to be above average in both math and English, which is certainly not the norm. And many students also have other skills–diplomacy or people skills, leadership, business acumen, etc. It is good that there are many ways to demonstrate one’s abilities and qualify for a college scholarship.</p>
<p>2) Every HS in the US has a Val and a Sal. Some of them are brilliant, despite their poor showing on the PSAT or not having taken it at all. And some of them are merely the best of a mediocre student body.</p>
<p>I think the “have/have not” high school divide can be seen in even greater numbers in states with low cut-off scores. I do not think that the number of students deemed NMSF really means all that much necessarily about a particular school or its district in terms of quality, but it is an interesting barometer to look at. Going back to the original poster’s disbelief at the fact that 80% of high schools have no semifinalists - I think in some states it might even be worse.</p>
<p>I tried to figure out a way to prove my hypothesis and luckily found a newspaper article in Mississippi that lists all 131 NMSFs in that state by high school. Interestingly, of the 131 semifinalists in the entire state, 18 of them went to one high school - where, according to another newspaper article, their senior class only has 89 students (it’s a private school).</p>
<p>So 13% of MS’s finalists come from one school alone, where they make up 20% of their senior class.</p>
<p>Digging deeper, four other schools near this particular school accounted for 13, 11, 9, and 6 semifinalists, respectively. All told, just five high schools in the state accounted for 43% of its semifinalists. If you add in the next two highest high school totals (5 and 5 semifinalists, respectively), just SEVEN high schools in MS make up more than half (51% to be exact) of the state’s semifinalists. Because I was curious if this was a “large high school” vs. “small high school thing,” I did some checking. Six out of those seven schools are within 15 miles of each other and their average senior class size is, approximately, 220 students (based upon the best numbers I could find).</p>
<p>Perhaps even more interesting is that there are reportedly 582 high schools in Mississippi, and only 50 of them had a semifinalist. That’s less than 10 percent - and many of that 50 only had one designee to boot.</p>
<p>I know Mississippi is not an ideal state perhaps for my example, but it was the only state I could find an entire listing online of 2009 semifinalists by high school.</p>
<p>Our public HS is in the highest socioeconomic group in our state. The HS does charge for the test and leaves the decision to take it up to kids and parents. Guidance had told the kids it was really just for practice, and didn’t count for anything. So for years there were no semifinalists. Recently, some kids started to prep privately for the PSAT, and, no surprise, a few became SF and Finalists. The Scholar award is a real rarity though; only a couple of our HS’s kids got to that level in the past decade (or maybe even longer), and we send >90% to 4-year colleges and the top kids to Ivies each year (though they are often athletic or legacy or URM admissions). I wonder how many high schools had NM scholars; did the OP ask this question of NM?</p>
<p>IMHO, that’s really the bottom line. In the grand scheme of things, the PSAT,SAT, ACT, GPAs, class rank and the AP courses mean very little - they are simply means to an end, which is getting into a particular college for some students or any college for a lot of students. </p>
<p>However, colleges (and elementary educational systems) have to have way of objectively showing the student has ‘mastered’ the material. Standardized testing, while certainly not the only measurement of academic success, is the easiest way to measure those results.</p>
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<p>Whether it is fair or not, this method of showing command of a subject is also very prevalent in the professional working world. Doctors must pass their boards, lawyers must pass the bar, accountants must pass the CPA exam, teachers must pass state exams, I/T professionals must pass certain exams to gain certifications, architects must pass a national exam, plumbers must take an exam to reach a certain level, etc.</p>
<p>While it is true that not every HS student is college bound and certainly there are students who are not great test takers, in my opinion, until we have a national educational curriculum and standards, we will continue to have very uneven performance across the country.</p>
<p>There is certainly no good reason that my son’s class of 60 had 10 NMSF and the entire county of 15 HS with 5,000 seniors only had 23 in total. My son’s school doesn’t prep the kids. They do take the PSAT in the 9th and 10th grade as practice, but still, I would not expect to see such a large discrepancy. There are many kids in the highest socioeconomic group in our public schools (and many who are in the lowest). Our school is very small (300 kids in the HS) and, as such, represents a tiny percent of the HS population in our county and a small % of the highest socioeconomic cohort.</p>
<p>My husband and I just had an idinner with 3 other couples that are friends. We all live in different school districts, one couple has a student at Harvard, high school was private. One couple has a student at Tufts high school was a public school. Two of us have children at public colleges, one in state and one out of state. Each of us has a current junior or seninor in high school so are either in the middle of doing visits and thinking about college for #2 or actually in the middle of applying for colleges. Of the parents 4 went to private colleges and 4 went to public colleges. 2 of the 8 went to boarding school, 6 of us went to public high schools. I brought up PSAT/NMSQT and asked them what they thought. The concensus, of which I agree, is that it is a good scholarship program, but not really high on our radar screens one way or the other. Our older children took the SAT, our younger children are not taking it unless in the case of the junior year parents they qualify for NMS. In other words, not terribly impactful on our college radar screens or plans. We all think NMS is a great program and a great opportunity for some, yet it isn’t an imperative in our lives that our children take it and it isn’t an imperative that our children make the cut-off. We all like the AP classes and think that they are helpful in preparing the kids for college. I think the statistics that were posted are quite good. 50% of the schools offering the test and 38% of college bound kids taking it. I’m just not seeing a problem with PSAT that needs fixing I guess. Of course I hope that high schools GCs are pointing this program out to students that would benefit, especially in districts that may not fund the test for their student. I hope that the value translates to educational opportunities and financial benefits for the winners.</p>
<p>mom2collegekids notes,- when a parent has asked me if his/her “straight A” child would likely get a college scholarship, I’ve politely asked if his/her standardized test scores reflect the top percentiles ( 95+ percentiles). Usually the answer is “no”…often the reality is that their “top student” is scoring in the 60-70 percentile - not usually high enough for any merit $$$. </p>
<p>This usually “opens the parents’s eyes” and makes them realize that their child’s school is not as “difficult” as they once imagined."</p>
<hr>
<p>Response: I have taught the SAT for many years. There are a HUGE number of kids who were REALLY sharp, attended a great high school, had a super GPA in high school that still bombed the SATs or PSATs. Having a lower number of National Merit folks doesn’t mean that the high school is weak or that there is a lot of grade inflation involved. </p>
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<p>Yes, it is true that a really smart high GPA kid could “bomb” his SATs, but if I saw that virtually all the 4.0 GPA students at a school were scoring in the 60-70 percentiles I would imagine that grade inflation was going on.</p>
<p>That said, I would truly wonder what was wrong if a “truly smart kid” with a 4.0 GPA repeatedly “bombed” his SATs. Unless the kid has anxiety attacks or some other similar issue, I would wonder how he managed to ace his course midterms and final exams, but not manage to do at least “pretty good” on the SAT. I wouldn’t expect “bombing” from an A student who can manage to do well on classroom exams.</p>
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