@RL_Dane @living8bit
To become a National Merit semifinalist, you need to score in the top 0.5% of your state on the PSAT. To reach it as a semifinalist, you need to score in the top 0.5% of the *highest scoring state*. Plus, because of COVID, a bunch of people that year were allowed to submit SAT scores that year instead of PSAT ones, but SAT has a *higher maximum score* so the highest-scoring state had the highest qualifying score in history.
Thank God I somehow hit the mark.