<p>I'll try this one more time with a different heading because I'm having no luck googling the answer - </p>
<p>Is there a separate National Merit semifinalist cutoff for boarding school students? There is a parent on another forum who insists that there are several regions set up for boarding schools which determine semifinalist cutoffs (midwest, mid Atlantic, etc), which in most cases are higher than the cutoffs for the states involved. I have never seen anything other than a state cutoff, but I have no experience with boarding schools.</p>
<p>I think the cut-offs are by the state the student comes from, period. Anyone claiming otherwise had better be able to point to a Web site (preferably the Web site maintained by the National Merit Scholarship organization) to prove the point.</p>
<p>I <em>know</em> it is the state of the high school that determines the cutoff. How do I know that? I was told by my son's out-of-state boarding school. Why was I asking? The cutoff was lower in boarding school state than in our state.</p>
<p>So, if you send your child from a state with a low selection index (?Arkansas?) to one of the more diverse boarding schools (?Exeter) you may perhaps be raisng the bar for NMS purposes.</p>
<p>p.s. If the boarding school is not in the boarding school pool, I believe that the state in which the school is located controls, although I haven't seen any written policy on that. As with all things NMS, it is probably best to call the NMS organization if this is critical info for you--althought their written materials and website are generally abyssmal, the phone help usually is very good.</p>
<p>I have been getting some interesting private messages about this, and have done a bit of Googling. It's maddening that the National Merit Scholarship program doesn't put ALL that it knows on its own Web site, but apparently boarding schools are grouped into regional groupings, so that there is a northeast region group of boarding schools (which includes the boarding schools to which my son is about to apply). </p>
<p>For many boarding school students, there would actually be no issue of obtaining a "merit scholarship," because they are applying to colleges that offer "scholarships" (= financial aid) strictly on the basis of financial need. But it would be interesting to gather the publicly available information about the boarding school students as they fit into the National Merit Scholarship program and post it in this thread. </p>
<p>don't forget that National Merit is only open to US citizens and that the sums of money in addition to the initial is dependant on a parent working for a participating corporation. So when all of these facts come forward one could perhaps see why it is less significant in the big picture of BS populations.</p>
<p>Is there really much of a difference to individual students? What I mean is this: the cutoffs between states probably aren't that significant and you could argue that a student will perform better on the test with the advantage of the prepschool education, so that if they are moving from a lower cutoff state to a higher one, they are also in better shape to do well on the test. </p>
<p>Just another one of the tradeoffs to consider, but I do think this one is minor. I also have to add that I can't think of a single student I've heard of who has received significant money from NM. Its value seems to be more as something good on a college application.</p>
<p>I wouldn't draw large conclusions from this experience, but my oldest was attending an out of state semester program when he took the PSAT as a junior and he was considered in the pool for his home state -not the location of the program. That experience was worth far more than a few points towards NM finalist designation.</p>
<p>Many colleges give substantial scholarships to NM Finalists, up to and even beyond full tuition. I know that ASU would have given my son a stipend of several thousand dollars in addition to the full tuition scholarship. (Of course the catch is that he would have had to go to ASU). USC offers half-tuition scholarships to NM; I think U of Miami does as well. Someone posted within the past two days that their daughter has a full tuition scholarship at Fordham based on NM status. </p>
<p>I think what is confusing some posters here is the idea of corporate scholarships or funds directly from NM as opposed to the many benefits individual colleges bestow on students based on the status. Maybe parents who are sending their kids off the boarding school would scoff at the array of colleges that woo the NM Finalists -- I don't know -- but for the ordinary public school kid NM can be the key to financing their higher education, especially if the kid is flexible as to college choice.</p>
<p>Good points. Flexibility is the key and for many students/families the money creates the flexible attitude. I suppose that students who would get Pell Grants and such at selective schools wouldn't worry either.....so high end and low end may not rely on NMS but the huge mid section might. </p>
<p>There have been many threads on CC discussing NMS.....pro/con. One thing is certain.....it can be confusing to folks who are looking at boarding schools. There is a separate stat pool and thus many times their student might do better staying in the home state.</p>
<p>I confess I haven't looked at the stats and won't. Performance on the PSAT is even more prone to the vagaries of illness, weather, having a 'bad day' or a million other things that can go wrong on test day because it is only taken during that one week on October. I may have read the question wrongly, but I thought the discussion was leaning toward deciding whether attending high school out of state would 'ruin' a student's chance at NM finalist. A fair question, but so what? That top student with great testing skills has only one opportunity that year - unlike the SAT. </p>
<p>I guess in the analysis, for me, NM status just isn't a big consideration. For every school that offers full tuition to NM finalists, there are colleges that have their own merit programs that rely on other factors. Once a student knows their NM status, they can research the appropriate merit schools.</p>
<p>Illness and weather huh? Your statement about variance state to state is about high score in one state is a qualifier and not high enough in another. So to me it is not equitable.</p>
<p>I agree it's not equitable. It is what it is. But isn't it different from state to state in recognition, really, that students in one state do better than those in another, either because they have access to better education or are just naturally smarter (I'm not saying that, but what could the reasoning be?) Maybe the newspapers in higher cutoff states use more PSAT-type vocabulary words. Maybe the larger the population, the higher the potential scores. On the other hand, I would guess that states with lower cutoffs have fewer students (as a percentage of the eligible population) that even take the test, so it would seem those taking the test would be stronger students. </p>
<p>Illness = maybe you have the flu that day. Weather = maybe you can't get to the testing location because of unusual weather, like a hurricane. There's no make-up, right? I don't understand 'huh'.</p>