<p>I'm just curious. We live in a state with a low cut-off score, so if my children score in roughly the 98.3 percentile they will be National Merit semi-finalists. They are in seventh and eighth grade, but their test scores to date suggest they unless they have a bad test day they will likely make our state's cutoff, as they usually are in the 99th percentile on various achievement tests.</p>
<p>Do any of you take the NM test into consideration when deciding whether or not to go to boarding school? I realize a lot of boarding school students don't go to state schools, but a lot of state schools give full rides to NMSFs, and combined with a good honors program it's not a bad deal. Unfortunately, most states with good boarding schools have high cutoff scores, and of course the New England boarding schools have their own, somewhere in the high 99th percentile.</p>
<p>We considered the effect for about one minute. National merit finalist is not guaranteed, mine scored very high on the SAT in 8th grade but missed the NMF cut off in 11th grade, even for our state. I think the boost you get in college admissions from the rigorous curriculum, connections with the college office etc that you get at prep school is greater than being NMF. HOWEVER- if I was looking at a full ride at a state university college I would most definitely consider it!</p>
<p>Baystate - in your case, the state cutoff is usually the same as NE Prep Schools, so it wouldn’t make any difference (unless you sent to to a prep school in another region where the score was lower).</p>
<p>The reason NE Prep School score is so high is due to the scores required for New England in general. It appears that the Prep School scores match the highest state score in that region. All the New England states have high cutoff scores. And for most of us it doesn’t make much difference, because few state schools in New England offer guaranteed merit scholarships of that magnitude.</p>
<p>Never even thought about it until I saw this post. I don’t remember hearing anything about this when I was in high school either. Something to think about when the kids are in high school.</p>
<p>Thanks for the responses. I guess the second part to this question is whether only the NE boarding schools have a higher cutoff score. I did some poking around recently for a Southern boarding school and noted that the number of NM scholars had dropped pretty dramatically last year. Don’t know if it was a bad year of if the Southern boarding schools have gotten a higher cutoff score.</p>
<p>I realize a lot of people on these boards are dead set on an Ivy League school, but when you consider that a number of good state schools have honors colleges with very high average ACT scores (over 30), and these colleges give a free ride to NM scholars, it makes attending a boarding school in a high cutoff state a doubly expensive proposition.</p>
<p>For our family, when we started looking at BSs, my daughter was only in 7th grade and college issues were a very distant consideration. Maybe that’s shortsighted, but I didn’t want to have too Machiavellian a POV on things. We have never been “dead set” on Ivies…and are very open to state schools. So we’ll just have to see how our daughter performs on the PSATs…</p>
<p>Yes, we considered the higher cutoff needed for National Merit SF from NE prep vs. our home state. There is a considerable difference. </p>
<p>We thought the benefit of the prep school outweighed that disadvantage for our daughter. But this is not an easy decision, because being a star in a local school gives you advantage in applying to the best colleges over being a “good student” at a top prep. There was a relevant article in the on-line Phillipian (Andover’s student newspaper) in May, discussing “How much does going to Andover hurt college chances” The majority of students for the first time thought Andover hurt more than helped them. I think the argument applies to most prep schools, and should be considered by families facing this choice.</p>