Has anyone predicted semifinalist cutoff for MI?
See post #401
^^^ Or the predicted cutoff for Hawaii? 
Anyone else wonder about the scoring on the SAT taken on June 6th? They say it won’t matter on the scoring but I don’t see how it can. They are not counting sections 8 & 9 and say it won’t hurt the scores. I wonder. My D better get a great score of I will have to have her take it again. Ugh
See post #367 for the information I need to make a prediction.
If you want it to be more accurate, see if you can get the junior class enrollment numbers for each of those years for that state. Otherwise, I use a nominal population growth number.
Bummer, when I used the link on College Board to get the data, I only had access to 2014. All the previous years were “Access Denied. You are not authorized to access this page.” http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/psat/data/cb-jr/archived/2013
Thanks for the offer though, @WRUAustin ! 
It is strange that the link doesn’t work. You can instead google:
2014-2015 college-bound high school juniors summary report Hawaii
Then change the year and google again.
This works. I just checked it.
@WRUAustin University of Houston is sending emails to students calling them potential national merit scholars. I wonder if they received a list already!
That language seems consistent with what other schools have sent out much earlier. I suspect they are just guessing at what the cutoffs are based on the past. That’s my guess. If they were to have a list, others would also and it wouldn’t stay secret very long. I think we have to wait until early September…
Yay! The magic of Google. Thanks again for this, @WRUAustin
HAWAII
14-15 44 89 48 6,142
13-14 36 120 40 6,015
12-13 51 84 61 7,000
11-12 39 63 38 7,530
10-11 35 100 50 7,845
09-10 48 138 55 7,487
08-09 40 93 42 9,274
Does anyone recall when the secret booklet of NMSFs was released to principles last year? I know someone posted the list by state sometime prior to 9/14 but I don’t know how long they had the booklet before they posted it. It had the names of the NMFS by school and a 3 digit code for intended major.
I suspect colleges giving out big national merit scholarships (full tuition for example) get some advance notice. I have seen A&M and Oklahoma also sending out messages and letters calling it some arbitrary name (A&M sent some kind of visit request letter for several days for national scholars or something like that).
Apparently UH was trying to call most of the people who made the national semifinalist list last year!
The correlation isn’t great, probably because it is a small state. I tried to find the public school enrollment numbers which typically improves the correlation, but I couldn’t find them.
That being said, last year the prediction would have been 213.8 and the number ended up as 214. For this year the prediction is also 213.8, so my best guess is for Hawaii to stay unchanged at 214.
For what it’s worth, @Hope2achieve, the National Merit office said they will accept the June 6th SAT scores as valid. I called them today to check on that.
Thanks JLowfder for checking.
Hello, can somebody please clarify some questions of mine?
1)The general consensus is that 202 is the national commended score. Does that mean that 202 is commended, or does 202 not count?
2)I’m not sure if this is still in effect, but do commended students still get to send their official psat scores to 2 or 4 colleges? If so, when does one select those colleges?
- I was looking at past forums, and I noticed that an email was sent out to potential commended/semifinalists in spring of their junior year. Was this same email sent out for class of 2016? I thought an email was just sent out to the principals? Thanks for the help!
This is the website to answer your question:
Thanks again for the insight. Sorry I haven’t responded for about a month, I have been busy with various things related to schools.
Opening it up a bit, since NMF won’t help me a ton monaterily, could someone simply provide a website with scholarship options. All the ones I have found have basically been to visit websites, accumulate points, and get a chance of a scholarship. I would love the real scholarships - lots of money, especially if I go to Stanford/MIT. I’ve also received letters from Columbia; however, I feel their engineering can’t top U-M, Stanford, or MIT.
I think the goal now is simply applying to colleges and scholarships. I got a 2050 on SAT - is that enough to “confirm” my score of 210 or should I retake it for safety measures as well? I have a 34 on ACT, so that should be fine for my colleges.
Thanks for your thoughts all!
@klettinator There are schools that will offer significant merit aid to NMF even if the scholarship isn’t called a National Merit Scholarship. Unfortunately, Stanford and MIT (and all the other lottery schools) are not among them. They don’t need to entice top students. Search for Common Data Set to get real numbers on how many freshmen get non-need based aid and how much on average. Here is Michigan’s http://obp.umich.edu/wp-content/uploads/pubdata/cds/cds_2014-2015_umaa.pdf. My son got significant offers from RPI, Northeastern, and RIT (Northeastern is $30K/year!). Sorry I don’t have a simple list to point you to but I’m sure there is one here on CC somewhere.
Outside scholarships tend to be small, and may not renew every year. But if you don’t mind writing lots of essays you should go for it! If you qualify for need-based aid the top tier schools will take care of you, but they may think your parents can afford more than you and your parents think is reasonable. If you don’t qualify for need-based aid but your parents are not willing or able to be full-pay you may have to adjust expectations and go to an excellent school that DOES provide merit aid.
@Klettinator I would suggest posting your question in the broader Financial Aid & Scholarship forum. You will get more responses especially if it is in its own thread instead of buried deep in this one. There are already some pinned posts there to help you and others there will help with your specific circumstances.