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I was wondering that too, but was unable to find the master list for our area like I found for central Jersey. More failures of our journalists. But I concluded that if there were more they would have reported them. That's 2 winners for a county of over 600k.

As for the test, there's no way to reach an uplifting conclusion. Either it's a measurement of how a community and it's school system succeeds or fails to prepare & develop it's students, or it's a measurement of innate gifts, which means JC is innately less intelligent than most other places.

I prefer the first choice. But that means there's plenty of blame to spread around. What I won't accept is the "culturally and economically biased test" crap. All those kids in Edison are either immigrants or children of them. Imagine the work it takes for them to score highly in the verbal section. I'll bet the message in their homes is "education 1st!", not videogames, sports or other diversions. Lincoln freaking NEBRASKA is the same size as JC and has 21 qualifiers! You can't tell me this is about economic privilege in wealthy suburbs.

We can contemplate this, or shrug - think happy thoughts- and trundle along the path of mediocrity, led by Mr. Epps, the mediocrat in chief.

I guess I should be used to threads being diverted elsewhere.

I do wonder though whether this list is exhaustive. I know that there were several finalists in my son's class at McNair. I can think of at least three off the top of my head. On top of that, using the PSAT as a metric for how well both McNair and Hudson are educating their students is a bit bogus.

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Sorry K-Lo, I know you are personally involved in improving the schools, but we can't pass up an opportunity to have a meaningful dialog about what our schools are realistically accomplishing and to shake people out of their complacency. I'm certain there are plenty of people in JC who don't realize that one semifinalist for a city of 1/4 million is a pitiful performance, not an achievement to be proud of. Apparently our local journalists are among them.

Can we just be happy for Georgia and Anschel without bashing anyone or anything else?

Given all of McNair's hype and national achievement ranking (2nd in NJ) I would have bet there would have been at least a handful of semi-finalists - not just one. My typical midwest suburban highschool just had 4 finalists out of 632 seniors and a total enrolement of 2014.

I was thinking the same thing, that JC's numbers seemed low. I looked up my HS's stats and they had 15 finalists. The total enrollment of that school district is 7,200 (k-12). While the school district is a bit of a odd situation due to it's close proximity to a large university it is not a selective school.

Congratulations to them, but I'm sorry, one for all of JC is not that impressive. I don't remember the numbers for my ordinary HS on LI, but it was pushing a dozen, and my wife's HS in northern Wisconsin had 8.

It's not easy to find local HS details, but look at this page of central NJ schools with several to more than a dozen semifinalists, and these are not elite "test in" schools, just ordinary high schools in ordinary towns.

Edison's John P. Steven High School has 26!!!

http://www.dailyrecord.com/article/CN ... Merit-Scholarship-Program

The low test scores relative to other elite schools or even some regular schools are why McNair is even included in the magazine national HS rankings unlike similar schools like Bronx Science or Stuyvesant. They're given a bye because the SAT scores show them simply to not be in the same class as those schools. And despite the high ranking from the number of AP classes that are offered, this test result shows them not to be in the same class as many ordinary NJ high schools.

I want my kids to get into McNair because it's the best we have, but lets keep their achievements in perspective and not lower our expectations of what our kids are capable of. As it stands the cream of JC can't compete with an ordinary suburban school, and that's plenty of food for thought.

Wow! I know both those great kids! Both are alums are Garden Preschool Cooperative.

Jersey CIty is proud of you, Georgia! Terrific job - good luck in the finals.

McNair Student National Merit Semi-Finalist - Jersey Journal