Talk:National Merit Scholarship Program

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This year the index for National Merit semifinalist in Florida was a 215 index. Last year the cutoff was a 214 index in Florida.

Good luck to 2005-2006 participants!

cutoffs

Hey I was wondering where you found these cuttoff numbers? I didnt' see any links in the article

--Crucible Guardian 05:40, 28 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No state cutoffs have been published yet; only the national percentiles are available. Semifinalists are announced in September. The only group officially identified as yet is the High Scoring group, which is the top approximately 50,000.

Can residents not from US also be eligible for this program? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 122.177.228.28 (talk) 15:20, 2 August 2015 (UTC)[reply]

National Merit Scholarship Program

Do they post the winners for 2006 anywhere? How about the State index cutoffs?

I don't know if National Merit does anywhere, but I'm sure with the large amount of people here we could gather enough data to do so (at least with the state index cutoffs). Douglas Whitaker 02:15, 19 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

They seem to be very concerned about violating the winners' privacy. They probably got permission from the various winners they list on their site to use their names. I have tried to get lists from past years from the NMSC, with no success.WmMBoyce (talk) 16:10, 24 June 2010 (UTC)[reply]

We might want to mention past winners such as Bill Gates and Lisa Randall talk 00:19, 10 February 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.58.152.238 (talk) [reply]

There is a list of some notable National Merit Scholars at [1] including the ones you mentioned. — Myasuda (talk) 15:03, 5 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

2006 Scores

Just so we can save room on this page, scores for individual states are not officially posted anywhere anytime soon, as far as I'm aware, though I'm sure semifinalists are already posting on message boards (hint, hint). If you qualified, your school officials will let you know probably very soon. Zagsa 20:08, 1 September 2006 (UTC)[reply]

2006 (Unofficial) Cutoffs

Here is a post on CollegeConfidential that has some of the cutoffs: http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/showpost.php?p=2993607&postcount=662. Some of the numbers are missing or circumspect nonetheless someone can incorporate them into the article right? Karma Thief 06:04, 15 October 2006 (UTC)[reply]

criticism

Should we include criticism of NMSP as being implicitly racist, as has been suggested repeatedly by the Journal of Black Higher Education? It's an important facet, and should probably be covered... Chris kupka 20:07, 13 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a reference for this comment http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1077-3711%28200122%2932%3C30%3ATRIBIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-1&size=LARGE&origin=JSTOR-enlargePage but I feel that this is irrelevant, all they do is offer special programs for black students to aid them in finding scholarships that are only offered to blacks students. Such scholarships are not offered for white students ,I'm not going to get into how raciest that is, so a program is not necessary.

Isn't it rather hypocritical that the award is called the National Merit Scholarhip yet different states have different score requirements.

71.251.187.82 (talk) 18:55, 19 January 2008 (UTC)Bob Goonie[reply]

Corrected the Criticism section to delete references to the College Board since the National Merit Scholarship programs are administered by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, not by the College Board. 164.144.232.10 (talk) 07:20, 18 May 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

I suggest we merge this with National Merit Scholarship Corporation. There's is hardly anything in the other article, and this program & the PSAT seem to be the focus, so let's merge them.-Wikiphilia 21:39, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good idea. Let's merge it into here.DGG 23:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC),[reply]

sentence

"All Finalists receive a Certificate of Merit in recognition of their outstanding performance in the competition. Generally, Semifinalists who fail to advance to Finalist standing do so because they do not submit the application, have a large discrepancy between PSAT and SAT scores, have atypically low grades for a high PSAT/SAT student (i.e. not at least mostly A's and B's), or do not receive the endorsement from their school."

As the writer admits, this is a generalization. Count me as one person who met the above criteria and was rejected to be a finalist. (A classmate with worse grades than me made it to the finalist stage). If you ask me the requirements are fuzzy and the selection process is mysterious. I don't think the quoted sentence is accurate, and even if it is, its too vague and certainly can't be backed up with statistics.

2007 cut off

I know in my state (PA) the cut off for the 2007 year was 200, I have a letter from the people that run it, but I don't know if it is necessary —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 72.94.4.197 (talk) 11:26, 11 May 2007 (UTC).[reply]

I scored a 200 in Kentucky in 2007, and my principal got a letter. 74.128.180.241 21:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

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History

As I believe I posted once before, there is no mention of the fact that there used to be a completely separate NMSQT;one became a semi-finalist based on this score, and a finalist based on a sufficient number on the PSAT. I would be interested in knowing when and why this test was done away with. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.82.131.130 (talk) 19:11, 13 November 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The lead section should point out that winning is not purely merit-based

The "Scholarships" section correctly points out that going from Finalist to Winner is not purely merit-based. You are more likely to win if your parents work for certain large companies, if you accept admission at a certain college, and other factors (see the "Scholarships" section). I feel this is important information that may belong in the lead section. The lead section rather strongly implies that it is purely merit-based, but that is only the case for 2,500 winners, the other 5,500 winners got sponsored scholarships.146.115.179.89 (talk) 23:33, 28 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]