80% of US High Schools have no National Merit Semifinalist this year

Parents Forum
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<p>I don’t know about GPA and income, but PSAT scores and income seem to match up pretty well.</p>

<p>Average household income in 3 wealthiest (and high scoring) states:</p>

<p>1 Maryland $70,545<br>
2 New Jersey $70,378<br>
3 Connecticut $68,595</p>

<p>Average household income in 3 poorest (and low scoring) states:</p>

<p>48 Arkansas $38,815<br>
49 West Virginia $37,989
50 Mississippi $37,790</p>

<p>While there are some wealthy people in rural areas ( Wyoming, which ranks 19th in income, but has low PSAT scores most likely has its average income thrown off by a number of millionaires–who probably don’t have kids in high school :wink: ), overall, rural areas(states) tend to be poorer than urban areas. BTW, I am not at all putting down rural areas. (Lived in one of the poorest states for 11 years, and in one of its poorest counties for 7 years, so I understand the problems there).</p>

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<p>You may not realize how much this talent may have benefited you in real life. In real life, we make quick multiple-choice decisions all the time. Very often these quick decisions are made based on very limited knowledge of each option. </p>

<p>As it pertains to CC, we do this on behalf of our kids very often, from their schedules/logistics/activities to clothes/shoes/food. I’m not talking about long term strategic planning, but moment-by-moment tactical decisions. It is a talent that is not immediately apparent – an unsung hero.</p>

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<p>Atomom, to play devil’s advocate the 3 top states are also historical SAT strongholds and are likely to be areas that gear the kids to that type of test through prep, etc. A better test would be to perhaps to look at Minnesota, Illinois and Michigan or Wisconsin at least then you are controlling in a non-scientific manner 3 higher income non SAT strongholds with 3 lower income non SAT strongholds and then look at NMS totals.</p>

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<p>FWIW, since the question about test prep arose–we live in the NE in a high scoring state, but the public HS has not encouraged prepping, based on the College Board’s data. However, I have to believe test prep can improve the outcome for kids at the high end. Mine was in the upper 90% range on the subtests as a sophomore, and the high school advised that the scores were unlikely to go higher and that prepping was not helpful, and said that the NM Scholarships were not that large anyway…Fortunately we ignored this advice. Ten sessions with a private tutor produced the highest scores ever achieved at the high school…thanks to other achievements as well, my kid was the first Scholar they’d ever had. I also think this score and recognition led to recruiting by, and some surprisingly large merit scholarship offers from top-20 schools (which, we learned, buy contact information for high scorers from College Board). I think kids who are already gifted can benefit from fine-tuning their approach to the test, and that parents shouldn’t assume that their kids’ HS knows much about their students’ potential or the opportunities that these awards can bring. This is true even in the SAT strongholds.</p>

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<p>I disagree with the SAT on many levels, thus why i never took it :slight_smile:
I’m a child of the ACT</p>

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<p>I’m sorry if I’m repeating what others have said, I couldn’t read through all of this but the OP’s comment, “Since PSAT scores track SAT scores very well, I have no doubt there are many high schools out there with either severe grades inflation or very poor quality of education.” struck an nerve with me.</p>

<p>I know it is safe to say that a high SAT score is a reasonable predictor of success in college. But does the correlation hold accross levels; does average SAT performance reliably predict average performance in college, (whatever that is)? There is no doubt that there is grade inflation and poor quality education in many HS’s but is poor PSAT success an indicator of this? Then again, is it fair to say that a lack of NMSF’s is an indicator of poor PSAT performance. That is incredibly unfair when in some states the cutoff is over 220 and in others it is as low as 203. The entires student body of a high school with a high cutoff, and no NMSF’s, could possibly have a higher score on the PSAT than every single SF in a low cutoff state. I’m sure many of us know of average students who made it to SF and valadictorians who did not make commended. It just may be that those students from schools poor in semi finalists had a much harder climb to the top to produce a record that makes them a contender for admission at the nation’s toughest schools. My point is don’t be so quick to judge.</p>

<p>Aside from the HS’s curriculum I expect there are many intangible factors that go into the environment of schools that consistently product NMSF’s and those that do not. So, be proud of your school if you are fortunate enough to be at a school that produces many scholars but don’t just write off students with great grades from schools that consistently don’t have NMSF’s.</p>

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<p>181818 this

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<p>was well said</p>

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<p>Indeed.</p>

<p>My district, with 24 public high schools, has ONE school (a public school) which consistently has NMSFs in it. ONE. (There are NO private schools in the district which consistently have NMSFs.) There is an excellent reason for this: it has the premier science and tech magnet program for the district, housed in a comprehensive high school. There are two other science and tech magnet programs in other comprehensive high schools, and they rarely (and not in recent years) have any NMSFs.</p>

<p>Because this ONE school is considered the “best” high school in the district, bright parents who care about education, who tend to have bright kids, fight to get their kids into this ONE school. Some of them move into the school’s catch area so this ONE high school is their kid’s “home” school. The science and tech program is competitive-entry and requires special testing; parents make sure to take their kids to the testing, which is done on a weekend. Some parents even try to cheat and lie to get their kids in, by claiming to live in the school’s catch area when they don’t.</p>

<p>I know parents who chose to put their children into private schools when their kids did not make it into the science and tech magnet program (and so could not go to this ONE high school because the family didn’t live within the school boundaries for this ONE high school).</p>

<p>Frankly, I doubt there is anything this ONE high school does which causes there to be NMSFs at the school, except attract kids whose parents really really want their kids in the “best” public high school in the district. The kids who are NMSFs would have been NMSFs regardless of where they had gone to school. At least two of this year’s NMSFs are SET (Study of Exceptional Talent) kids – kids who scored over 700 on either the math or CR section of the SAT before they turned 13.</p>

<p>This ONE high school also has the highest number of N Achievement SFs in the district; there is one other public high school in the district which this year has a couple of NASFs; it’s one of the other science and tech magnets. </p>

<p>The bar for NMSF is very high in this state; only the very highest scorers are going to make NMSF. Even if ALL the kids are above average, as in Lake Woebegone, not all the kids who are above average, or even significantly above average, can be NMSFs, because the number of NMSFs is capped. The population of kids taking the PSAT is MUCH larger now than it was when I took it back in the Dark Ages; the population of KIDS overall is MUCH larger now than when I took the PSAT. The number of high schools in the country has increased since I took the PSAT. There are going to be FEWER kids/high school, overall, who make NMSFs than when I took the PSAT because the number of NMSFs has not increased over the years, and this trend will continue so long as the number of high school students increases and the number of NMSFs stays the same.</p>

<p>And it’s also harder to get into Princeton than it used to be.</p>

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<p>Has the actual number of NMSF in the country been the same for decades? Or is it a percentage based number that has increased as student numbers have increased?</p>

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<p>ihs, I also wondered about that, if the total number of scholars is constant, if the percentage is fixed, etc.</p>

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<p>^^^ I could be wrong, but I believe the number of NMSF is set at 16,000, of which 15,000 become finalists. </p>

<p>The number of high school seniors actually hit a peak of sorts in the early 1970s (baby boom), went down and then came backup to where it is now, which I think is historically the highest but not much higher than in 1973-74.</p>

<p>I’m sure the number of kids taking the SAT and PSAT has been increasing the whole time though.</p>

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<p>Bovertine, interesting. So if the number is set then it doesn’t make any difference in the per capita NMS if more kids take the test which is what I suspected. Also I was a high school graduate in 1974 and I do believe that was the ‘watershed’ year for quantities of kids and actually the college landscape was considered competitive, but less kids went on to higher education. But if you look back at the average ACT and average SAT scores from 1974 they are lower than “these days.” Does that mean that kids are smarter or that teachers have gotten better at teaching a curriculum that leads to higher scores because of our data driven society. Is the caliber of students in selective higher education better prepared or are they simply more regimented to retain certain information? It’s quite convoluted.</p>

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I don’t know if it unfair but it certainly makes the naming convention odd … it’s actually more like SMSF = State Merit Semi Finalists. Says 3togo who knows students who were not NMSF in Mass who I believe would have been in all 49 other states … not sure how that makes sense for “national” recognition … but them are the rules.</p>

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<p>“The kids who are NMSFs would have been NMSFs regardless of where they had gone to school.” This is probably true for some but maybe not true for all of the NMSF’s</p>

<p>Aside from the obvious tangibles that you mention,two of the intangibles that I see at the one school that you mention are that most of the kids have very driven parents and these driven bright kids with driven bright parents are all together in one school probably reinforcing their values. I expect that some kids would be at the top no matter where they went to school but others may be helped to maintain high standards because they are part of that environment. The experience in that type of environment has to be different than the experience of students in a school where there are fewer students at the top and most of the peer group doesn’t know or care about the PSAT or NM. In fact even the bright students probably also don’t know much about or care about these either. This is not to say that there aren’t very constructive things that these kids do care about just that this scholarship isn’t really on their radar and their attention and time even the night before the test arei on other things. The question that I struggle with is how to change that because kids are missing out on great opportunities because of it.</p>

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<p>I don’t know about the ACT but I think the average SAT scores are pretty much the same or even a little lower now. </p>

<p>[SAT</a> - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAT]SAT”>SAT - Wikipedia)</p>

<p>I think they say this is because more kids are taking the test. Plus there was a recentering that had some sort of effect.</p>

<p>On the high end it is much different. I don’t know if my index on the PSAT woud have qualified me to be a NMSF these days, except in a few states (there was no writing test then - they doubled the CR and added it to the math.) Over time, I’ve forgotten exactly what it was, but it was low 200s I think.</p>

<p>Plus. average scores at the top uiversities have soared.</p>

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<p>181818, yes but they might be focused on other great opportunities. I don’t know. I do know that at least in our school system, all kinds of opportunities are “put out” to the kids. Some choose to participate, some don’t. Some qualify, some don’t. Creating an educational environoment that is challenging to all students of all abilities is a lofty goal. Is it attainable? I don’t know. To have administration focus on one test for one scholarship program with a finite amount of “potential winners” at every school in the country doesn’t seem like a valuable use of resources.The fact that 50% of high schools administer the test to begin with speaks volumes about the commitment to this particular program and is a very, very good participation rate.</p>

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<p>I can’t speak to NMSFs in other schools, but at the school about which I was talking, it’s absolutely true: these kids would have been NMSFs regardless of school.</p>

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<p>3togo, NJ, MA and MD all had the same NMSF cutoff this year – 221.</p>

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<p>Don’t forget, SAT was re ‘centered’, I believe in the late 1990’s (?) and that raised the average score. Don’t remember how much, but it was significant amount.</p>

<p>The flip side to the above discussion is, that I do strongly believe that if DS had been educated in a more academically rigorous area/district/state, his score would have been much higher than it is.</p>

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<p>owlice: Okay, I can’t argue with that. </p>

<p>Momofthreeboys: I agree with what you are saying with regard to committing resources. That is one reason why the lack of SF’s a school produces doesn’t paraellel a lack of quality education. I do however believe that alot can be done to support the students for whom this applies without committing excessive resources or taking away from the school’s currently strong programs. Some of it is just using resoures already available, a lot of it is about attitude, educating students and giving those showing potential to become SF’s encourangement and support. For some that could be life changing and that is why it is worth it.</p>