Comments on: The Republican candidates, high school edition

By: Beverly

Beverly — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 10:36:02 +0000

When I won the National Merit Scholarship in 1974, it was what they called a “portable” scholarship, not tied to any school or discipline: the rarest of them all. Ratio of semi-finalists to finalists, 10:1.

Then I went to college and became a complete party animal, so I didn’t get my Phi Beta Kappa key. Damn and blast. “Pottle deep while sluggards sleep!”

By: Molly Brown

Molly Brown — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 05:56:45 +0000

National Merit Semi Finalist and Finalist are pretty much the same thing. Both my kids were fairly recent Finalists; one in 2010 and one in 2012. Since I home schooled them I had to take care of the formalities that are usually completed by a candidate’s high school college counselor. And am very thankful that Marcia at the National Merit helped me through the process! It is the student’s score on the PSAT taken in Junior year that earns them Semi Finalist status. The rest is basically establishing that the candidate is in actuality who the say they are and that they are a student in good standing at their school. Essentially, they need to fill out some paperwork, supply a character reference and chose a first choice college for the scholarship. This could fall through the cracks a number of ways, a counselor not submitting the forms or a change of schools, something like that. For example, I was not aware it was based on PSAT scores until we received a letter with my son’s scores. Most parents probably just leave it up to the school and if they aren’t the kind of school that churns out candidates they might not file the paperwork correctly. But a Semi Finalist – like a Finalist, has achieved PSAT scores in the top 1% of their state for that year. BTW, the 1% ranking is based on scores in the student’s state which can vary as widely as 15 or more points (comparable the 150 points on the SAT). Cutoff points vary from state to state and year to year – a score that would get you in in one year might not be enough in another. We were in Hawaii which is fairly competitive, but, only my daughter would have made National Merit in Massachusetts! I do feel it would be more fair to take an average score of the nation as a whole. When people ask me how to get their kids to National Merit I tell them to move to Nevada!

By: GRA

GRA — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 02:29:27 +0000

They’re all so thin. Well, Fiorina and Rubio seem to have kept their weight in check.

By: Eric

Eric — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 17:53:52 +0000

Artfldgr: “which is why they wont support a person like Reagan”

I thought Cold War liberals supported Reagan, at least on his Soviet policy, which was the overriding foreign policy of the period.

By: Mrs Whatsit

Mrs Whatsit — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 17:28:12 +0000

Lee, it’s a picayune point, but in my day, at least, there was a substantive difference between qualifying as a National Merit Semi-Finalist and a Finalist. At that time, you took a separate qualifying test known as the NMSQT. I took it and qualified as a Semi-Finalist but not a Finalist; I was able to state on my college applications that I was a Semi-Finalist, but not apply for the actual scholarships. My friend (who had sensibly stayed away from a late-night party that I attended the night before the NMSQT) earned a score exactly one point higher than mine — this qualified her as a Finalist and she did ultimately end up with a scholarship.

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 15:09:51 +0000

“neoconservative is a liberal who was mugged by reality and wants to press charges.”

they are basically soft leftist elitists.. they only seem to be not on the left, but when it comes to support they wont support the people that support the common worker against elite ideas and so on, they side with the elite who will pretend to back off a bit, but not try to back off the 40 years of bad

elitists fear blue collar average people
which is why they wont support a person like reagan, who was not an elite either..

your going to get the same old same old, soviet light is still soviet… no way to clean house with someone who wont totally change things or even dares to claim to.

better to vote for bernie or hillary and get it done rather than vote for the other side and death by a thousand tiny cuts and back downs post election, which is what elites do.

elites have thin skins, they CAN be manipulated and influenced by making them fear their reputation, but someone whose reputation was always negative, has no such qualms.

GO Hillary…
there really is no other candidate..
anyone else but the hated one, who has always been hated and never had good press, ever… is just the same thing in a different shade of suit

good cop bad cop, they are both cops
elite leftist, elite not left they are both elite
they both had to agree to get their degrees and pass their courses..

so either they lied to become elite to pass
or they agree… they certainly never oppose and lose that status they bank on

they cant get rid of their fear nor their elite given ideas… their only opposition is in pieces not the whole… they certainly will NEVER come in and clean house, and so, at best, they can never be more than half a step back…

meanwhile, we need a house cleaning..

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 14:28:39 +0000

By the way oldflyer… my son is a officer i the navy, he can walk away from his commission any time he likes too…

its enlisted men who cant…
dumbass

By: Artfldgr

Artfldgr — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 14:24:08 +0000

Alas, our noble men of genius, Heaven’s real messengers to us, they also rendered nearly futile by the wasteful time; — preappointed they everywhere, and assiduously trained by their pedagogues and monitors, to ‘rise in Parliament,’ to compose orations, write books, or in short speak words, for the approval of reviewers; instead of doing real kingly work to be approved of by the gods! Our ‘Government,’ a highly ‘responsible’ one; responsible to no God that I can hear of, but to the twenty-seven million gods of the shilling gallery.

-Thomas Carlyle, Latter-Day Pamphlets, 1850

By: FenelonSpoke

FenelonSpoke — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 12:36:07 +0000

Thanks; That made me smile and chuckle and I needed that.

By: Lee

Lee — Wed, 06 Jan 2016 11:24:01 +0000

Beverly — “Semi-finalist” just means that for whatever reason he didn’t get awarded a National Merit scholarship, and that can happen even if someone has perfect PSAT and SAT scores. He could have screwed up the way I did — waaaay too early in the process, you pick *A* school and if you wind up not applying there, or committing to going somewhere else and don’t submit the change in time, you’re “only” a semi-finalist.