2011 National Merit Semi-Finalists

[Westerner92]

Geez, what do they feed those kids at Flower Mound! Seriously though, kudos.
It looks like my school, if placed in DFW, would be with the ranks of Frisco and Coppell. Not too bad I guess.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by Big G

DISD could have the same thing going with Preston Hollow. Instead, essentially NOBODY from that neighborhood chooses DISD.

1, Fort Worth only has ONE top-tier private school (Country Day- which is not in the same part of town as Paschal) vs just the immediate Preston Hollow area with 8-9 elite school choices. Some of the PH private schools have been there since the 1940's, so PH'ers choosing private schools has been going on for 70 years or so.

2, You may not realize this, but Hillcrest used to be a fantastic public school until the 1970's-ish era. All the neighborhood kids used to go there and it was a high achieving, nearly 100% white school. Many of my Park Cities friends' parents graduated from Hillcrest in the 60's and 70's. As the 80's began, the DISD school board grew to resemble the bunch of idiots they are today and neighborhood attendance plummeted. This is also the same time that "white flight" from DISD populated Plano, Richardson, Garland and other inner-ring suburbs, just the people in PH stayed in their homes and neighborhoods and went private as a school board focused on meetig the needs of an explodig black population. History is repeating itself today as a massive "black flight" to the suburbs is underway because black families are upset the schools are now so focused on meeting the needs of Hispanic students which make up 60%+ of DISD's population.

[Spree]

>> Geez, what do they feed those kids at Flower Mound! Seriously though, kudos.<<

Agree! I thought so too.

[stan4]

We should be proud of our kids!

-Nat'l Merit Finalist 1993 PSHS

[adixyz]

Originally Posted by Matt2010

I was wondering about "North Hills Prep", Irving. Do you know the stats for that school?

I couldn't find the exact numbers on the class size but it should be less than 100. Given the vast % of Asians in this school and the peer pressure I have heard, the number of National SF is less.

[5stones]

With all the hoopla etc about Westlake Academy and it's total IB program from K-12, I am surprised there wasn't more than 1 NMSF.
I would think there would be at least 4-5.

[pepper131]

The results from SEM and TAG are disappointing. I've talked to the Semi Finalist from SEM and she took the PSAT class when it was offered at Townview (or maybe it was SEM specific; not sure). It is no longer offered.

I would still expect more from the students and perhaps to parents to push their kids to study and prep for the test. SEM is 48% economically disadvantaged; many parents of the students are ESL or non-proficient English speakers. The school has around 400 kids - 100 in each class. So the percentage is dismal at 1%.

The kids at SEM who would show the greatest promise to do well on the PSAT are cramming for Super Lab ( a mix of AP Physics B and AP Chemistry); an intense class taken in 11th grade. They are also taking Latin III, AP Calculus BC, AP English, AP Environmental Science, AP US History, AP Biology and AP Computer Science.

So perhaps the accelerated pace at SEM puts the PSAT on the back burner for many of these kids. And often...kids will have a hard time recalling basic math from Algebra and Geometry once they get into Calculus and more advanced math (heard this from Karen Dillard a couple of weeks ago).

[Big G]

Originally Posted by 5stones

With all the hoopla etc about Westlake Academy and it's total IB program from K-12, I am surprised there wasn't more than 1 NMSF.
I would think there would be at least 4-5.

Westlake Academy cannot completely pick and choose its student body, like St. Mark's or Cistercian. It has to take all students from Westlake who wish to attend. Granted, that's an extremely rich demographic, but even rich people can have dumb kids. A fairer comparison would be HPISD, which puts out 3-5% NMSFs per year. Given the extremely small graduating class size of Westlake, 1 or 2 NMSFs sounds about right. The school's just too small for the percentages to mean anything.

[Lakewooder]

I don't think Preston Hollow really has that many kids - this is an older, much wealthier demographic than most in the country. I've often heard that 75225 is at the top for such measures. In any case, it appears around 75 or so of them are in each grade in middle and high school (Hillcrest) in DISD. Hard to track as everyone has a different idea of the boundaries. Probably more at the elementary level. That doesn't count those in magnets. I know we at Woodrow have a few in 9th grade Pre-IB. If you count WT White I would say around 100-125 or so of the neighborhood 'rich kids' (mostly white but not all white) are in those classes. ED Walker Middle School was ranked exemplary.

I think you can still get a good education at Hillcrest with the AP program - it's sort of dropped off the map for the last couple of years as Conrad opened and its district was changed. Still they had some going to Ivies and now another NMSF. Believe me I don't like to give Hillcrest compliments but you can't say NOBODY will go there.

[Lakewooder]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

2, You may not realize this, but Hillcrest used to be a fantastic public school until the 1970's-ish era. All the neighborhood kids used to go there and it was a high achieving, nearly 100% white school. Many of my Park Cities friends' parents graduated from Hillcrest in the 60's and 70's.

I can certainly tell you that Hillcrest kids really looked down up on us East Dallas types back in those days (and the 80s). "Why do you like your school so much? It is SO OLD", "It looks like a castle" etc...I can also remember they said quite a bit about how many minorities we had...

We asked them why they always wanted to hang out with us!