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[The National Merit Scholar program is not automatically awarded based on merit -- a necessary step is that the student send in an *application*. Your statistic may simply be a result of that school aggressively ensuring that every student who meets the initial requirements gets off their butts and sends in an NMS application, whereas other schools left it up to the students themselves (resulting in far lower application rates).]

I don't mean to be rude, just informative.

Then make sure your information is correct.

The National Merit Scholars ARE selected on the basis of their SAT scores. That is the determining criterion.

Ahem:

Oh, look, filling out and sending in an application is a necessary part of the NMSP program. Just as I said.

And since you brought it up:

...and I went to a public high school school.

I'm sorry, but you overlook the important fact that the student must qualify based on their SAT score. They qualify based on the test, and then further consideration is based n a combination of tests, essay, academics, etc.

Not only that, but you ignore the fact that you said, A much better indicator would be raw SAT rates or some other indicator

Raw SAT qualifies them in the first place.

They were selected from 15,000 finalists and 1.3 million high school students who entered the program by taking the 2002 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test as juniors.
All finalists compete for one of the National Merit $2,500 Scholarships. The number of winners in each state is based on its percentage of the national total of graduating seniors.
A selection committee that included college admissions officers and high school counselors reviewed the information submitted by finalists and their schools, evaluating each finalist's academic record, scores from two standardized tests, leadership, essay and a written recommendation.