National Merit Semifinalists 2018 (Plano, Carrollton, Richardson: elementary schools, college, quality of life)

[UnfairPark]

Just to put things in perspective, an Allen senior told me that Allen High School's senior class has 1600+ students, 20 of them made NMSF. According to him, almost everyone he knows, joined KD during summer after 8th grade.

This puts them at 1.2% NMSF while 6% of Plano west made NMSF.

[DFWUser1]

Originally Posted by UnfairPark

Just to put things in perspective, an Allen senior told me that Allen High School's senior class has 1600+ students, 20 of them made NMSF. According to him, almost everyone he knows, joined KD during summer after 8th grade.

This puts them at 1.2% NMSF while 6% of Plano west made NMSF.

Allen's numbers are respectable if not great. Higher than HP (doesn't make HP bad) much better than McKinney or many other high schools at hyped Frisco or comparable to Coppell etc. Please stop negative publicity. Don't go for microscopic statistics. There is everything at Allen and students can pursue what they like.

Allen just got named 2nd best place to live in Money Magazine list in the entire country. There is a reason for it. Stop obsession with NMSF lists. There should be an all round focus on sports, arts, education and students should excel in the field they chose. My guess is that out of number of NMSF's being churned from West Plano, some are from parents push and not out of interest and I doubt they excel in their fields later on in life. Example, there is a danger if we have doctors in the society who become doctors not because of their passion or interest but because of social or parental pressures, which is quite common in Asian cultures.

Allen, Texas: MONEY's #No. 2 Best Place to Live in 2017 | Money

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by DFWUser1

Allen's numbers are respectable if not great. Higher than HP (doesn't make HP bad) much better than McKinney or many other high schools at hyped Frisco or comparable to Coppell etc. Please stop negative publicity. Don't go for microscopic statistics. There is everything at Allen and students can pursue what they like.

Allen has a larger quantity of NMSF than HP (21 vs 15) but Allen's senior class is 3X larger than HP's. Since NMSF awards the top .5% of scores, you always have to measure NMSF in terms of % of class.

Allen at 1.2% is respectable (a little over 2X the average school's) but not what I would consider "great."
HP at 3.0% is great. Very few area high schools have 3%+ of the senior class awarded NMSF.
Plano West at 6.0% is off the charts amazing. Outperforms all but the very, very best private area private schools.

It's not disparaging Allen to say that other schools in the area outperform Allen. And NMSF is not a microscopic statistic.

[DFWUser1]

Originally Posted by TurtleCreek80

Allen has a larger quantity of NMSF than HP (21 vs 15) but Allen's senior class is 3X larger than HP's. Since NMSF awards the top .5% of scores, you always have to measure NMSF in terms of % of class.

Allen at 1.2% is respectable (a little over 2X the average school's) but not what I would consider "great."
HP at 3.0% is great. Very few area high schools have 3%+ of the senior class awarded NMSF.
Plano West at 6.0% is off the charts amazing. Outperforms all but the very, very best private area private schools.

It's not disparaging Allen to say that other schools in the area outperform Allen. And NMSF is not a microscopic statistic.

We all know you always boast about HP - don't care. You obviously didn't get the point/substance of my post. (I didn't say NMSF is microscopic statistic, if you understand. I mean to say don't do all kinds of analysis to some how try to bad mouth Allen. If you say 3% at HP is great, have you taken the affluence into consideration which is obviously much higher than entire Allen? the argument that always comes up in praising East Plano? so it's waste of time to dissect the numbers) and I am not here to argue nor have time to jump on each and every post like you and boast about HP, Plano etc.! And not everyone can or want to live there for various reasons. While it is good you are trying to help others on board - I see some arrogance in your posts and you doesn't seem to stand contradicting views.

[TurtleCreek80]

Originally Posted by DFWUser1

We all know you always boast about HP - don't care. You obviously didn't get the point/substance of my post. (I didn't say NMSF is microscopic statistic, if you understand. I mean to say don't do all kinds of analysis to some how try to bad mouth Allen. If you say 3% at HP is great, have you taken the affluence into consideration which is obviously much higher than entire Allen? the argument that always comes up in praising East Plano? so it's waste of time to dissect the numbers) and I am not here to argue nor have time to jump on each and every post like you and boast about HP, Plano etc.! And not everyone can or want to live there for various reasons. While it is good you are trying to help others on board - I see some arrogance in your posts and you doesn't seem to stand contradicting views.

You're confusing boasting with providing correct facts. You clearly stated that Allen did better than HP and that's simply not true. You brought HP into the conversation, not me.

[TheOverdog]

If you say 3% at HP is great, have you taken the affluence into consideration which is obviously much higher than entire Allen?

Allen as a city and a district is actually pretty high up there in terms of affluence as well, probably about equal to Frisco if not higher as best in Collin County for a large city.

[compSciGuy]

Here are percentages for the top public high schools, ordered by percentage. I just eyeballed the schools before doing the calculations, please update as appropriate. The TEA website was missing data for the privates (or at least St. Marks and Hockaday).

Plano West 77/1378 = ~5.5878084

Flower Mound 32 / 955 = ~3.3507853

Liberty 17 / 508 = ~3.3464557

Highland Park 15/554 = 2.7075812

Coppell 22 / 819 =~ 2.6862027

Plano East 24 / 1358 =~ 1.76673049

Plano 22 / 1377 = ~1.5976761

https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/adhocrpt/adste.html

[MKDFW]

Originally Posted by UnfairPark

Those schools are very selective, don't have to admit every applicant like PWSH. By the way look at how much it costs for a kid to attend these schools, with all of their prep efforts percentage wise they should produce 50 times more than PWSH.

Once you adjust for percentages, only three private schools stand out - Hockaday, St. Mark's, and Greenhill. But, as you point out, the private schools hand pick the students, while public schools have to admit all kids. It is astounding to me that the other private schools have such few NMSF. What is their explanation/justification?

[BigDGeek]

Originally Posted by MKDFW

Once you adjust for percentages, only three private schools stand out - Hockaday, St. Mark's, and Greenhill. But, as you point out, the private schools hand pick the students, while public schools have to admit all kids. It is astounding to me that the other private schools have such few NMSF. What is their explanation/justification?

Just spitballing...maybe some elites may not care as much about NMSF because they don't need the scholarships or the prestige factor to fund tuition at or gain admission to elite schools.

[synchronicity]

Originally Posted by compSciGuy

Here are percentages for the top public high schools, ordered by percentage. I just eyeballed the schools before doing the calculations, please update as appropriate. The TEA website was missing data for the privates (or at least St. Marks and Hockaday).

Plano West 77/1378 = ~5.5878084

Flower Mound 32 / 955 = ~3.3507853

Liberty 17 / 508 = ~3.3464557

Highland Park 15/554 = 2.7075812

Coppell 22 / 819 =~ 2.6862027

Plano East 24 / 1358 =~ 1.76673049

Plano 22 / 1377 = ~1.5976761

https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/adhocrpt/adste.html

Thank you for the numbers and the link!

Adding a few more, Carroll Sr was 22/711, for 3.094% (higher than I expected). Colleyville Heritage was 19/487, for a VERY impressive 3.90% (higher than every school listed above save Plano West). I'm somewhat surprised by Coppell's relatively low number (still superb, but not as high as they've been in some past years) and Liberty is rapidly establishing itself as a possible entrant to the "Usual Suspects" conversations.

Looking very quickly at numbers here: National Merit Semifinalist Cutoffs Class of 2018 – Compass Education Group and at the link you noted, there would appear to be 363,933 11th graders statewide. It also appears that there are 1,458 NMSFs statewide, or 0.4% of the total number of students. (I am under the impression that NMSF is determined by top 0.5% of all students taking the PSAT, with adjustments within each state hence the scoring cutoffs) but could be mistaken. All of these schools are well above that.

Insert the usual caveats about accuracy of class sizes and, more importantly, single year numbers being outliers that understate or overstate a school's "expected" performance on this metric. (I'm a big fan of Colleyville, but would be surprised if they maintained this level of NMSF performance over the next few years, for example).

(Private schools, of course, often have much higher percentages of NMSFs. My understanding is that it's not uncommon for top tier privates to have 25% or more of their class be NMSF. There are many obvious reasons for this, starting at "highly selective, competitive admissions" and going from there)

Last, NMSF is just one item among many to look at, and it's strongly correlated with SAT scores, of course. Attending Plano West will not magically improve the chances of "your" kid coming even close to NMSF, and there are zillions of wildly successful people who were not NMSF (and plenty of people who tested very well who have not made a whole lot out of their lives). That said, again, congrats to everyone who achieved that difficult accomplishment and I wish them the best in their future endeavors!