How do they determine how many per state?

Paying for College National Merit Aid
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<p>I think from reading this board is that the general consensus is that no one knows.</p>

<p>BUT, I was thinking. If it is by the number of people who take the PSAT, that is not good. I live in TX and the schools here (at least all the ones I know of) tell the kids to only take the PSAT if they expect to score high enough to end up with a National Merit. Only about 1/4 of our high school was advised to take it. And you have to pay to take it. Ironically, sophomores can take it free.</p>

<p>But in Iowa, everyone is told to take the PSAT in junior year. It was just automatic. There were no fees associated with it. You took it at school, just as you would with any of the standardized testing on previous years (which was the ITBS or ITED). </p>

<p>SO, if they went by number of people who took the test, if only 1/4 of the kids ever take it in one state, and 100% in the next, then clearly, it will be much easier to earn the status in the next state.</p>

<p>However, if they do it by number of people graduating from high school, in Texas, that would be very difficult to graduate. While no one knows the real stats, because people in home school do not register at all, nor are they tracked at all, yet, it is estimated that about 10% of Texas kids home school and 1/3 of the nation's home schoolers are from Texas. But no one really knows because home schoolers do not register or anything. AND, private schools are not required to be registered, so, you have populations there too. </p>

<p>In most states, home schools and private schools have to register, meaning, it would be possible to collect the data on how many kids graduate in any given year for those states.</p>

<p>In light of the fact that it would not be possible to collect any sort of data on how many kids are graduating high school on any given year in Texas, then, this number would not be accurate to use.</p>

<p>Anyone actually know how they figure the number of NMSF from each state? Or have a good guess?</p>

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<p>16,000 total NMSFs, of which allocated to each state in the same % as HS graduates from each state. So if CA has 10% of HS graduates, then CA gets 10% of NMSFs (just an example, not actual numbers). Simples :)</p>

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<p>If it did work like that, then it would stand to reason that the states with the highest average PSAT scores would have the highest cut off for the NMSF, right? But it is not working like that. For example, I looked up SD and IA specifically to compared to TX. Both SD and IA state summaries were such that I would expect their cut offs to be way higher than Texas’ cut offs. Yet, they are always a lot lower. Why is this?</p>

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<p>The states with the highest cut scores to a large extent are states which prioritize this test. They are states where everyone takes the SAT, so that PSAT is the appropriate practice test and most everyone takes the PSAT too. For ACT-leaning states, PLAN/PACT is the practice test and is generally offered free during school day. In these states the PSAT is more likely to be offered on a Saturday for a $25 fee and a smaller proportion of students take PSAT. If you look at the stats for the states with high cut scores, you will see a high proportion of students taking it twice, first time in 10th grade. These states have large numbers of competitive students who actually study and practice for this test. We are in WI, which is more of an ACT state and my D knows kids who got 35 on ACT but never took PSAT or SAT. With a low proportion of kids taking the PSAT, but NMSC wanting a set higher %age of graduating seniors from each state, they dip lower in scores to get the #s they want.</p>

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<p>Just for an example, let’s use Iowa and Texas, since you were talking about those. It may be that your schools are anomalous in both states. Here is data about public school grads. in 2009-10: [Table</a> 1.Public high school number of graduates, Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and estimated first-time 9th-graders, by state or jurisdiction: School year 2009–10](<a href=“http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2013/2013309/tables/table_01.asp]Table”>Table 1.Public high school number of graduates, Averaged Freshman Graduation Rate (AFGR), and estimated first-time 9th-graders, by state or jurisdiction: School year 2009–10)
I don’t know where to find the exact data for these states on private school and homeschoolers, and as you say, for Texas good data on that may not even exist. But it’s OK to use public school #s as a baseline measurement, because the differences are so large that those other numbers couldn’t be enough to change the general pattern. I’m using the College Board #s just released for college bound sophomores and juniors.</p>

<p>Iowa: 34,462 HS Grads. PSAT: 3107 sophomores, 8401 juniors. 24% of junoiors took the test.</p>

<p>Texas. 280,894 HS Grads. PSAT: 229,052 sophomores, 207,068 juniors. 74% of juniors took the test.</p>

<p>This is likely repeated in Masachusetts, California, etc.</p>

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<p>

There is no mystery. The NMSC publishes a brief description of the process. A brief summary is in the FAQ for this forum. </p>

<p>

There is no reason to expect (1) graduation rates connect in some way to either PSAT participation or PSAT scores nor (2) high average scores connect to high cut-offs. For (1), if a state graduates a higher percentage of its students and receives a correspondingly larger number of NMSF slots, then lower test participation in that state should drive cut-offs down as there are fewer high scores to qualify as NMSF. For (2), low participation states tend to have higher averages because better students self-select to take the tests. This is why IL, MN, IA, and WI lead the nation in average SAT scores–no more than 7% of the students in those states take the SAT and they tend to be those most interested in competitive colleges. But there is no reason to think that just because a greater concentration of strong students take the test implies that there is are relatively more students in the whole graduating population of that state to get high scores.</p>