nmsqt dropoff?

[creation123]

First post because I've been interested in this school and service for a bit and lurking here the people here seem very cool, and i wanted to ask a question about something that caught my eye looking at class profiles for different classes.

For the classes of 2022 and 2023, the amount of national merit recognized scholars was ~500 students, which out of the like 1200 admitted is extremely high and very very impressive for any school. However, for later classes (2024-2027), this number drops into the 40s and 30s, with the same amount of students admitted, similar SAT score averages and such. I was just interested if west point changed their recognition standards or if this is just some massive anomaly due to some factor I'm missing. Thanks

 

[justdoit19]

Could it be a Covid glitch?

I know that for a bit, USNA was test optional (meaning, if UNABLE to take them bc of limited testing options, a candidate would be considered without scores).

 

[99Gold]

If you go back and look prior to the Class of 2022, it hovers around 100. 2022 and 2023 seem like huge outliers and shocking stats to be honest. Looking at it from a statistical perspective, I would conclude that the College Board changed the NMS recognition program in 2016 and again in 2018 (when the Class of 2022 and the Class of 2024 would have been juniors in high school). The Class of 2026 would be the first class where COVID affected the PSAT/NMSQT as they would have taken it in fall of 2020. My ds took it with no issues that year.

Drastic changes in USMA admissions guidelines could explain it too but that seems less likely to me.

 

[creation123]

Could it be a Covid glitch?

I know that for a bit, USNA was test optional (meaning, if UNABLE to take them bc of limited testing options, a candidate would be considered without scores).

I was thinking that too, but I feel like that'd make the nmsqt recognition go down since less people had the ability to take the test. Also I'm not sure if the years line up for covid like 99 gold was talking about. Entirely plausible though

If you go back and look prior to the Class of 2022, it hovers around 100. 2022 and 2023 seem like huge outliers and shocking stats to be honest. Looking at it from a statistical perspective, I would conclude that the College Board changed the NMS recognition program in 2016 and again in 2018 (when the Class of 2022 and the Class of 2024 would have been juniors in high school). The Class of 2026 would be the first class where COVID affected the PSAT/NMSQT as they would have taken it in fall of 2020. My ds took it with no issues that year.

Drastic changes in USMA admissions guidelines could explain it too but that seems less likely to me.

hmm, that seems weird for sure. Even then, 100+ is still a lot of scholars compared to what the numbers look like right now, so I'm still interested if anyone knew if collegeboard did do some massive renovation of the selection criteria. Of course it could also just be how covid worked out since I know future classes would have to deal with that during junior year.
I don't think any other service academy reports this, and I don't think its fair to compare with civilian colleges because they almost always only report SF/F/scholar, which I doubt west point is doing here, so idk if I could see any other relevant boosts other than here.

regardless thank you for the help!

 

[franknd]

Be careful not to mix apples and oranges. National Merit Semfinalists are a hard number, around 16k/year. What HAS changed in the last few years is the College Board National Recognition Program (Black/Hispanic/Native American/Rural and Small Town), which loosened up standards a fair amount. The threshold PSAT/NMSQT criterion for CBNRP went from about the top 2.5-3% within each respective group to the top 10% within each respective group. Plus, they added other ways to qualify, namely though AP scores.

 

[creation123]

Be careful not to mix apples and oranges. National Merit Semfinalists are a hard number, around 16k/year. What HAS changed in the last few years is the College Board National Recognition Program (Black/Hispanic/Native American/Rural and Small Town), which loosened up standards a fair amount. The threshold PSAT/NMSQT criterion for CBNRP went from about the top 2.5-3% within each respective group to the top 10% within each respective group. Plus, they added other ways to qualify, namely though AP scores.

hm, so do you think that would cause the inflation for classes of 2022-2023, and they changed it back to just commended/semi/finalist for future years?

 

[franknd]

hm, so do you think that would cause the inflation for classes of 2022-2023, and they changed it back to just commended/semi/finalist for future years?

After looking at the class profiles for the last five entering classes, I'd say that beginning with the entering class in 2020, they narrowed down "National Merit Scholarship Recognition" to only include NMF and perhaps NM Commended. Before that, I'd guess they also included what are now called Recognition Program students and who knows what else. That would be the only way to explain how the numbers decreased from nearly half the entering class to about 3-4%.