Mississippi National Merit Semifinalists 2018

National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has announced the semifinalists in their 63rd National Merit Scholarship Program. Semifinalists are current high school seniors who took the PSAT in October of 2016 and scored among the top 1% in their respective states.

To win the coveted “Semifinalist” designation in Mississippi, students must have earned a “selection index” score of 211 out of 228, which is roughly equivalent to a 1400 out of 1600 SAT composite score. To put this rare achievement into perspective, Mississippi juniors could have missed no more than approximately 12 out of 47 questions in Reading, 9 out of 44 questions in Writing and Language, and 9 out of 48 questions across both Math sections.

(Photo Caption – At 13 National Merit Semifinalists, Highland Colony Parkway neighbors St. Andrew’s Episcopal School and Madison Central High School tied for number of honorees, but St. Andrew’s takes the prize as 14% of its senior class was represented or 14x the national average. )

Semifinalists are eligible for full rides to Ole Miss and Mississippi State (valued at more than $60,000) plus more than 1,000 corporate-sponsored scholarships and 4,000 college-sponsored scholarships.

Out of 1.6 million juniors entering the competition by taking the PSAT, approximately 16,000 students score in the top 1% to earn the designation “Semifinalist,” and about 90% of these will go on to become “National Merit Finalists.” Only 2500 students will earn a $2,500 scholarship and the title National Merit Scholar.

Piqosity has confirmed directly with NMSC that the cutoff score for obtaining “Semifinalist” designation in Mississippi was a 213 and a 211 for Commended.

Top Mississippi Schools by National Merit Semifinalists

The schools on this list had three or more Semifinalists in the 2018 competition:

1. St. Andrew’s Episcopal School – 13
2. Madison Central HS – 13
3. Mississippi School for Math and Science (MSMS) – 12
4. Oxford HS – 11
5. Jackson Preparatory School – 9
6. Clinton HS – 5
7. Lewisburg HS – 5
8. Ocean Springs HS – 5
9. DeSoto Central HS – 5
10. Starkville HS – 4
11. Center Hill HS – 3
12. Hernando HS – 3
13. Murrah HS – 3
14. Oak Grove HS – 3
15. Pass Christian HS – 3
16. St. Patrick Catholic HS – 3

Names of Mississippi Semifinalists by High School for Class of 2018

Congratulations to this year’s high scorers!

Note that the three digit number before a student’s name is their self-selected “College Major Career Code.” 999 means undecided; click here to download the explanation to all codes.

BILOXI H. S. 

1. 907 Lyman, Spencer G.
2. 832 Meynardie, William W.

BRANDON H. S.

1. 450 Adcock, Griffin T.
2. 907 Bailey, Jonathan D.

CENTER HILL H. S.
 

1. 999 Hester, Murphy
2. 302 Riecke, Jordan P.
3. 870 Shol, Stephen

CLINTON H. S. 

1. 843 DeYoung, Tanner
2. 602 Franks, Michael
3. 600 Kaur, Herleen
4. 467 Martinolich, Noah G.
5. 161 Pevey, Mary M.

CRYSTAL SPRINGS H.S. 

DE SOTO CENTRAL H. S. 

1. 600 Camp, Jacob R.
2. 450 Nelson, Gregory
3. 740 Peacock, Emma M.
4. 459 Share, Reese D.

EDUCATION CENTER SCHOOL (JACKSON)

GEORGE COUNTY H.S. 

1. 455 Riser, Ashley J.

GERMANTOWN H. S. 

1. 162 Grimes, Richard H.
2. 833 Loshelder, Augustine

GULFPORT H. S. 

1. 950 Dedeaux, Flora J.
2. 894 Jiang, Kevin

HAMILTON H.S.

HERITAGE ACADEMY

HERNANDO H.S. 

1. 209 MacLain, Emily S.
2. 628 McCann, Stephen A.
3. 833 Trigg, William G.

HICKORY FLAT ATTENDANCE CENTER

HOMESCHOOL 

1. 550 Bosarge, Jordan E.
2. 201 Sowers, Peyton

JACKSON ACADEMY 

1. 843 Maxwell, Randolph H.

JACKSON PREPARATORY SCHOOL 

1. 169 Creel, Aidan H.
2. 628 Gleason, Parker
3. 999 Lamb, Elly P.
4. 999 Mitchell, Mary Margaret
5. 254 Peets, Reed N.
6. 450 Roberson, John G.
7. 185 Vance, Gregory R.
8. 999 Williams, Morgan M.
9. 467 Yin, Siyuan

LAKE CORMORANT H.S. 

LAMAR SCHOOL 

LAWRENCE COUNTY H.S. 

LEWISBURG H. S.
 

1. 450 Green, Addison M.
2. 450 Hughes, Dylan W.
3. 619 Luke, Caitlin D.
4. 894 Smith, Isabella C.
5. 602 Winters, Paul W.

LONG BEACH H.S.

MADISON CENTRAL H. S. 

1. 450 Banerjee, Rimika
2. 160 Barton, Laura A.
3. 200 Brock, Anna E.
4. 454 Cherukuri, Chanukya S.
5. 303 Dellinger, Jackson G.
6. 712 Gall, Madeline G.
7. 628 Grovich, Noah R.
8. 682 Little, Luke A.
9. 999 McDonald, David B.
10. 455 Michels, James R.
11. 628 Miller, Mary R.
12. 628 Praveen, Advait
13. 901 Smith, Claire A.

MISSISSIPPI SCHOOL FOR MATHEMATICS AND SCIENCE (MSMS)

1. 160 Comino, Christina
2. 950 Dunkelberg, Aidan
3. 742 Johnson, William L.
4. 999 King, Emily V.
5. 160 Liao, Kevin N.
6. 459 Nguyen, Gary T.
7. 450 Pettit, Leah K.
8. 833 Stewart, Griffin
9. 000 Swiderski, Sarah C.
10. 162 Tenev, Vivienne
11. 628 Whitwam, Julia L.
12. 450 Zhang, Jinjiang

MURRAH H.S.

NORTHPOINT CHRISTIAN SCHOOL 

NORTHWEST RANKIN H. S. 

1. 162 Lemon, James P.
2. 743 Yang, Newton L.

OAK GROVE H. S. 

1. 200 Cantrell, Hannah R.
2. 830 Davis, Ryan P.
3. 999 Hinton, Julianna G.

OCEAN SPRINGS H.S. 

OXFORD H.S. 

1. 200 Bu, Joanna
2. 162 Elgohry, Marawan M.
3. 629 Gul, Shahbaz W.
4. 201 Jones, Grace-Anne
5. 214 Mitchell, Lilian C.
6. 628 Pasco-Pranger, Sadie C.
7. 710 Pearson, Joshua E.
8. 999 Ravishankar, Anish
9. 628 Renfroe, Anna L.
10. 907 Sullivan, Ann M.
11. 161 Swords, Julia

PASS CHRISTIAN H.S. 

1. 454 Frisby, Kade
2. 602 Larson, Christina R.
3. 303 Skinner, Darryl A.

PETAL H.S. 

PILLOW ACADEMY

1. 628 Ko, Curtis J.

POPLARVILLE H.S. 

PURVIS H.S. 

RIDGELAND H. S.


1. 302 Wilson, McKennley R.

SALTILLO H.S. 

SACRED HEART H.S.

SOUTHAVEN H.S. 

ST. ANDREW’S EPISCOPAL SCHOOL
 

The Semifinalists are (back, from left) Destini Jimerson, Julia Jia, Larry Qu, Chappel Pettit, Parker Grogan, Emily Kruse, Warner Speed; and (front, from left) Joe Han, Charley Hutchison, C.J. Carron, Satwik Pani, Zach Bobbitt, and Arko Dhar. 

1. 950 Bobbitt, Zachary J.
2. 836 Carron, Christopher J.
3. 628 Dhar, Arko S.
4. 250 Grogan, Parker L.
5. 999 Han, Qiyu
6. 836 Hutchison, Charles R.
7. 773 Jia, Julia X.
8. 454 Jimerson, Destini L.
9. 500 Kruse, Emily E.
10. 843 Pani, Satwik
11. 120 Pettit, Chappel C.
12. 162 Qu, Larry
13. 209 Speed, Warner R.

ST. MARTIN H.S. 

ST. PATRICK CATHOLIC H. S.

1. 306 Jackson, Tyler A.
2. 999 McKee, John D.
3. 742 Springer, Melvin R.

TUPELO H. S.
 

1. 451 Grimes, Katlyn J.
2. 628 Kwag, Aaron

VANCLEAVE H. S. 

1. 602 Li, Wei

VICKSBURG CATHOLIC SCHOOL 

WINONA H.S. 

WEST LAUNDERDALE H.S. 

A Warning About Equating Scholars with School Quality

With relatively few hard numbers by which to compare schools, parents may be tempted to look at figures such as “average SAT scores,” “college acceptances,” and number of “National Merit Semi-Finalists.” However, parents should use caution— these data points are admittedly good at describing the profile of a single class, but it’s difficult to verifiably say that there is a direct causal relationship between these college fitness numbers and the quality of the school’s education.

Many academically talented students were already scoring in the top 1% on their SATs even before they entered high school (many 7th graders take the SAT and/or ACT as part of the Duke University Talent Identification Program).

Furthermore, a list of colleges to which graduates have been accepted in the last five years is similarly spurious. For example, if a graduating class has 200 students and one of those students was admitted to Rice or Harvard or MIT, does that mean everyone else got in too? These lists really reveal very little.

These numbers may, however, accurately indicate that a quorum of academic elite students has decided to attend a certain high school. What these statistics indicate then is that if parents want to be among this elite, they may want to follow in the same path.