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The National Merit website says there are about 16,000 semifinalists. But if you think about it, that seems like a really small number. I mean 20,000 or so people apply to Harvard alone, not to mention the rest of the IVY league, MIT, Stanford, Duke, Caltech, the top LAC's, Georgetown, UC Berkeley, etc........

It's not THAT hard to become a semifinalist, so why are there so why are there so few?

By Chen (Chen) on Monday, September 08, 2003 - 11:58 pm: Edit

I've noticed it in my school too. A bunch of people who normally do better than me are not among the semi finalists. I think they didn't take the PSAT seriously and left their hard-core studying for after the PSATs. They could've sucked at the grammar part...or they might live in a highly competitive state.

By Medusa2003 (Medusa2003) on Tuesday, September 09, 2003 - 12:00 am: Edit

The number is arbitrarily set by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. Roughly 1/2 of one per cent of the top scorers in each state on the PSAT in their junior year become National Merit semifinalists. If you do well on standardized tests it's not that hard but you still have to score higher than 99.5% of the other students in your state.

By Thedad (Thedad) on Tuesday, September 09, 2003 - 12:44 am: Edit

Yes. This is why the cut-off varies slightly from year to year.

I have conflicting feelings about it: on one hand, it doesn't seem as hard as some other things; otoh, it's regarded by the colleges as Le Big Deal and, if so, good.

By Zorro5280 (Zorro5280) on Tuesday, September 09, 2003 - 10:34 am: Edit

Does this not also make one think that many of the inflated stats posted on this board are, in fact, inflated if not downright imaginary sometimes? I mean, doesn't EVERYONE here claim to have a 1610 (no typo) SAT I?

By Nyugrad (Nyugrad) on Friday, September 19, 2003 - 08:56 am: Edit

Personally, winning a siemens westinghouse or Intel science award means more. These awards require dedication, hard work, and the culmination of months and sometimes years of research. It requires writing abilities way beyond those tested on the SAT.I have seen students become merit semi finalists who can't break 1300 on the SAT, or have no other dedication beyond studying for this one test. On the other hand, I have seen "commended" students who have invested their time in research and later pulled near 1600s on their SAT. They simply decided to use the time in their sophmore and junior years to go to science and math competitions; learning the practical applications of their courses, rather than spending hours (and a small fortune) preparing for one exam. I am not putting down those who qualified. It is a tremendous achievement if that is something you worked hard for and achieved. I'm simply saying that those who did not qualify are not inferior students to those who did- it may only have been a matter of priority. This may also partially account for the small number of semi finalists as the original posted noticed.