The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has named 155 Mississippi high school seniors as National Merit Semifinalists in the 2024-2025 National Merit Scholarship Competition. These high-achieving students scored among the top 1% of Mississippi students who took the PSAT/NMSQT in October of 2023, which is essentially an “early edition” of the SAT taken for college admissions.
Nearly 10% of Mississippi’s brightest students attend St. Andrew’s Episcopal School. As a percentage of the senior class, central Mississippi stalwart St. Andrew’s is in a league of its own—its 14 Semifinalists mean that 21% of its senior class is in the top 1% academically.
The statewide public boarding school Mississippi School for Mathematics and Science (MSMS) took second place, with approximately 12% of its high school seniors qualifying. In fairness, MSMS and St. Andrew’s usually trade off for the top spot on this list.
Jackson Preparatory School rounds out the state’s top 3 most academically inclined schools with approximately 6% of its graduating class being named as National Merit Semifinalists.
Other top Mississippi high schools with between 2% and 4% of their seniors earning National Merit Semifinalist status include St. Stanislaus College, Madison Central HS, DeSoto Central HS, Lewisburg HS, Germantown HS, Gulfport HS, and Oak Grove HS. In particular, Madison Central typically ranks as the top public, non-boarding school on this list.
In addition to valuable bragging rights, Semifinalists are eligible for full rides (free tuition and housing) 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.
This year’s current junior class will enter next year’s National Merit Scholarship Competition by taking the PSAT in October 2024. Interested students may need to ask their counselors about registering and paying to participate.
Cutoff Score for Mississippi National Merit Semifinalists
To win the coveted “Semifinalist” designation in Mississippi, high school juniors must have scored a 212 or higher (out of 228), which is up significantly from last year’s cutoff score of a 209 and reverses a two year trend of declining scores. This cutoff score is roughly equivalent to earning a composite SAT score of 1410 (out of 1600).
About the National Merit Scholarship Competition
Nationally, over 1.3 million students participate in the National Merit Scholarship competition beginning the fall of their junior year. Juniors from more than 20,000 US high schools compete by sitting for what is essentially an abbreviated, practice SAT (PSAT).
However, unlike the ACT which is required and paid for in Mississippi as part of public school accountability ratings, the PSAT is usually optional and costs students approximately $20 out of pocket to participate.
Approximately 16,000 students earned the designation “Semifinalist.” (An additional 34,000 students earned a “Commended” by scoring above a 207 out of 228). National Merit Semifinalists can qualify for a wide range of both corporate- and college-sponsored scholarships.
Around 90% of Semifinalists will go on to become National Merit Finalists; 2,500 students will eventually gain the title of National Merit Scholar, which comes with a $2,500 scholarship. Read more about the requirements to become a Merit Finalist or Merit Scholar.
Top Mississippi High Schools by National Merit Semifinalists
The following are the top schools by Semifinalist percentage in the graduating class of 2025:
- St. Andrew’s Episcopal School – 21% of seniors
- Mississippi School for Math and Science – 12%
- Jackson Preparatory School – 4%
With relatively few hard numbers by which to compare schools, parents and students may be tempted to use the number of National Merit Semifinalists to make a judgment about a school’s quality. However, while these data points can be useful in describing the profile of a single class, it’s difficult to verifiably say that there is a direct causal relationship between these achievements and the overall quality of a school’s education.
Many academically talented students are likely to score in the top 1% on the PSAT regardless of what school they attend. These numbers, therefore, best indicate which schools seem to attract a quorum of academically elite students.
To most accurately assess a school’s academic quality, parents and students should look at a number of factors, including their National Merit Semifinalists and their test scores.
Visit Piqosity’s in-depth analysis of Mississippi high schools’ ACT scores.
Names of 2024-2025 Mississippi Semifinalists by High School
Congratulations to this year’s high scorers!
How to Improve your SAT and PSAT Scores
For most students without any significant learning differences, achieving good standardized test scores is not rocket science:
- Do well in school. The single most important indicator of success on the SAT and ACT is good grades in math and English.
- Work practice tests and learn from your mistakes. You can’t improve without first knowing what to work on.
- Remediate any weaknesses. Relearning what you should already know is the most time consuming part of test prep. No amount of tips or tricks will help you score better if you don’t know how to identify the main idea of a paragraph or add and subtract decimals.
Piqosity offers up to 4 digital PSAT practice tests and 12 full-length practice tests for the ACT and SAT. In addition to these practice tests, our platform includes:
- Piqosity Virtual Tutor to guide you step-by-step
- 10+ hours of video instruction
- 60+ content lessons, including video tutorials
- Adaptive, personalized practice sets that adjust to your strengths and weaknesses
- Real-time score prediction based your progress
- Answer explanations for all test questions
Sign-up and 2 SAT and ACT practice tests are entirely free plus individual plans are competitively priced. Piqosity also offers significantly discounted pricing for schools, which can be paired with teacher training and development.
PSAT FAQs
Students take the PSAT during school hours in the month of October. The actual date is set by the school where the student is scheduled. Not all schools offer the PSAT, and the ones that do may charge students a fee.
The PSAT is most important for 11th graders, because it allows them to participate in the National Merit Scholarship competition and primes them to get ready for the actual SAT. However, the PSAT is also offered to 8, 9, and 10th graders. The version of the PSAT offered to 8th and 9th graders is different from the one taken by 10th and 11th graders.
The PSAT 10/11 is taken by 10th and 11th graders in high school, generally in October. 11th graders use the PSAT 10/11 to compete in the National Merit Scholarship Competition. The PSAT 8/9 is for 8th and 9th grade students as a “pre-pre-SAT.” Both tests are structured exactly like the Digital SAT for college admissions but assess slightly lower-level concepts in math and English.
If you are a 10th or 11th grade student, do not use the PSAT 8/9 as it will be too easy and set unrealistic expectations. If you are an 8th or 9th grader, you can use the PSAT 10/11, but just know that it should be difficult for you given that it assesses math and English concepts, which you may have never seen before.
Piqosity’s new Digital SAT course is currently free through May August 24, 2024. We are confident in the quality of our content but not all of it is available. Therefore, access is free because this course is still in development:
- Not all 12 full-length tests are available. While we intend to offer 12 digital SAT practice tests plus 2 PSAT tests, we are rolling them out sequentially between February and May, 2024.
- Instructional lessons are not yet uploaded. Our content team is in the process of adapting paper SAT lessons plus writing entirely new lessons and videos. These how-to guides will be uploaded beginning in May.
- The questions are not normed. Piqosity is unique among e-learning platforms in that every question on our platform is continuously peer-normed for difficulty. However, given the newness of the DSAT content, we don’t yet have that data. For this reason, you’ll also notice that our full-length tests are not currently numbered 1-12. Instead they have unique names like “Baker” or “Sid Rich” so that we can shuffle the order around in order to encourage more usage of certain tests during the free, development period.
- The best score on the PSAT is one that places you among the top 1% of test takers in your state, which qualifies you for the designation, “National Merit Semifinalist.” Across all 50 states, the average cutoff score in 2023 was a 214; however, your state could be higher or lower.
- For academically competitive students, a good score on the PSAT is one that places you among the top 5% of all test-takers, which earns you the designation “Commended Scholar”. Generally this score is a selection index of 207 or higher.
- Your PSAT score report will show two primary scores: Total Score and NMSC Selection Index score.
- The Total Score is similar to an SAT score but the range is only a 320 to 1520 instead of 400 to 1600.
- The Selection Index is used to determine your eligibility for a National Merit Scholarship. The Selection Index score is calculated by doubling your Reading and Writing score, adding your Math score, and taking 10% of the sum [(RW × 2) + M] ÷ 10.
- It’s good practice for the SAT and ACT. For the moment, these college admissions tests remain very important for most students and the colleges they’re applying to. The sooner you start preparing, the more likely you are to earn a high score.
- You could win a big scholarship. Students scoring in the top 5% and up may be eligible for National Merit Scholarships. Students scoring in the top 1% may be eligible for scholarships worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in the form of free college tuition, room, board, and expenses!
- Your school told you so. Many high school juniors are required to take the PSAT during school hours. Schools require students to take the PSAT for the reasons above but also because administrators need a clear idea of how their students are performing relative to students at other schools.
The National Merit Scholarship recognizes the top college-bound seniors by PSAT score. “Commended” scholars are the top 5% of PSAT test-takers nationwide. The more prestigious “Semifinalist” scholars are the top 1% of PSAT test-takers in each state. Most Semifinalists go on to become Finalists and are eligible for big scholarships including entirely free tuition, room, and board at major public colleges.
- The PSAT is essentially a practice test for the SAT. About half of juniors nationwide will take the PSAT primarily as a way of qualifying for the National Merit Scholarship program.
- NMQST stands for “National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test,” which just means that you take the PSAT in order to qualify for the National Merit Scholarship.
Why is Houston-based Piqosity writing an article about Mississippi?
Shelby Joe, Piqosity’s founder, was born and raised in Mississippi and was himself a National Merit Semifinalist.
Click here to download the original press release from National Merit Scholarship Corporation (via Reddit). This article was last updated on September 13, 2024.
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