<p>The number of commended students are based on a national cutoff, whereas the number of SF qualifiers are state based. While I appreciate the concept of fair representation of SF from all states, this, in fact, penalizes the students residing in states with stronger education programs. It saddens me to read so many posts from students with 99% ranking who consider themselves failures because they will not make their state's high cutoff. Any time a student ranks at the 99 percentile academically is an impressive achievement regardless of where one lives. I wonder if the National Merit Scholarship Corporation has ever considered giving SF status to all students whose overall score is 99% nationally in addition to maintaining the state-by-state qualification scores.</p>