<p>Or do you know anybody who has? I know that most NMSF become NMF, but my guess is that the 15,000 students that become NMF are really good students. There is probably a very strong correlation between NMF and being great students.</p>
<p>In my son's prep school nobody has a score above 3.5 GPA ever. Yet they have 20-25 NMF every year. They have sometime the highest grade as B plus in the course yet most of the class score 5 on AP exam. Answer is yes.</p>
<p>dstark, I researched this pretty thoroughly through years of cc threads at one time. </p>
<p>It seems that the key is not your average, but the number of "C" 's --even in AP courses. Weighting doesn't count. The consensus seem to be that those in the 10% of semi- finalists who didn't move on had more than 2 or possibly 3 C's. Last year the son of a friend of mine didn't make it. He was in the lower 50% of a large public and he did have certainly more than 3 C's. Also didn't do too well first semester senior year and they check on that, too.</p>
<p>This year only 1 out of 45 to 50 per son at his school didn't make it.</p>
<p>Dstsark, you old cheapskate, you need to just get ready to fork over some serious cash and quit complaining. haha (don't they have smiley or some way to show your joking)</p>
<p>I really am a cheapskate. Like you, I really have reservations about these colleges being worth the cost. Actually, I don't think they are worth the cost. A full ride sounds great to me. I don't know what my son would think. I haven't asked him. :)
(Colon right parenthesis makes a smiley face. Get with the new technology. :) )</p>
<p>We only had five finalists at d's school this year. Last year there was only one finalist so there has been improvement. Out of those five finalists one did not initially get notified that she was a finalist at the same time as the other four. It made no sense because she was probably the most brilliant girl of all. Turns out the NM people never received her SAT score. She had fortunately kept the documentation proving that she had sent the score and it was all cleared up by phone the next day. But I think it was probably a scary day for her as I think she (and most of these students) is using her finalist status for big tuition money. None of the finalists are extremely wealthy.</p>
<p>As far as the original question.... all our finalists are among the top ten students (top two percent) and I don't think any of them have ever made a C. The lowest grade among all of them was probably my daughter's 87 in AP Calculus BC last year.</p>
<p>Texdad
If you scroll to the bottom of this page, click on advanced, then scroll to the borrom of that page, and click on "smilies" or "vb", you will also have all the CC tricks of the trade at your fingertips.</p>
<p>As far as I know, any NM Semifinalist who returns a completed application is automatically a Finalist, provided their scores more or less match up.</p>
<p>This is why there are 16,000 Semifinalists and ~15,000 Finalists.</p>
<p>chocoholic, thanks.</p>
<p>High PSAT alone will carry a student to semi status.</p>
<p>If the school reports serious discipline issues or the students GPA is mediocre, or if the most recent SAT shows a major drop, that could keep him/her from progressing to Finalist.</p>
<p>im a junior in CA and i got a 218 this year. is there any reason why i wouldn't be a natl merit semifinalist? im very paranoid</p>
<p>anyone? help? please? i'd really appreciate a response</p>
<p>trckrazie 88, there is usually a score that makes it in each state. Do a search for national merit or psat on cc.com. You will get the normal score for Cal. It doesn't vary more than a point or two. 218 makes it in most States.</p>
<p>My son did not make finalist in spite of a 235 PSAT and 1460 SAT I's - his GPA killed him. It's a 2.7 unweighted and he failed a class junior year. We pretty much knew from the get-go he was toast but I called to find out the process.The NM people told me that the people that don't advance are mostly those with low GPA's; there are some that have other issues, such as not returning the paperwork, or even not being in the country legally, or not getting a counselor recommendation. Also, you can appeal the decision if there were extenuating circumstances, but the woman I spoke said that they seldom reverse the decision.</p>
<p>ckr1147, your son is obviously bright. Thanks for the info. I wonder if a 3.5 would be considered low?</p>
<p>I saw that your son was accepted at Long Beach State. I was at the campus last summer and thought it was very, very nice.</p>
<p>Good luck with Goucher.</p>
<p>Some semifinalists who don't go on to become finalists never fill out the forms--family issues were the reason in one instance I know about. If I were advising my own children (who aren't old enough to have this concern yet) about this issue, I'd just tell them to fearlessly fill out the forms, do my part to fill out the parent part of the required forms, and see what happens.</p>
<p>I'm a finalist with what I guess would be a 3.5 when converted but my school is erally competitive.</p>
<p>Dima343, congratulations. Did you ever get a C?</p>