’09 National Merit semifinalists announced
I just wrapped up writing about the 2008 National Merit Scholarship winners in July.
But already, the list of nearly 200 Oklahoma students who are semifinalists in the 2009 National Merit Scholarship Program is out.
The 195 students are among 1,600 nationwide who will go on to compete for $35 million in college scholarships. About half will win, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
I did a few breakdowns of the list of Oklahoma semifinalists:
143 attend public schools.
42 attend private schools.
9 are homeschooled.
1 goes to a charter school.
Three schools yielded more than 10 semifinalists:
The Oklahoma School of Science and Mathematics, with 22.
Jenks High School, with 14.
Holland Hall School in Tulsa, with 13.
The students qualified by earning the highest scores among state test-takers on the 2007 Preliminary SAT exam.
The list of seniors will be narrowed down to a list of finalists before the scholarship winners are announced in the coming months.
Click here for a list of all the Sooner semifinalists.
Wendy Kleinman
Education Reporter
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Comments
too bad some of these slots could have gone to higher scoring students in other states. oklahoma has a lower index figure to meet than many states, in order that it may be represented ‘fairly’ (portional to population of graduating seniors).
oklahoma isnt the lowest, at 208, but only a dozen or so are lower. 200 (mississippi) is the lowest and 220 (maryland) is the highest. this equates to a 200 SAT point discrepancy (times PSAT scores by ten to get SAT score predictionS). why do we keep rewardng mediocrity? it is supposed to be a MERIT scholarship.
do you really consider the OSSM a public school?