> It’s been a while, but I remember most of those “National Merit” type things to be not very important or relevant. That's what I thought when I was a kid, bu

> It’s been a while, but I remember most of those “National Merit” type things to be not very important or relevant. That's what I thought when I was a kid, but it turns out that the important college ranking system uses "number of national merit finalists" as a high weighted metric. I got a full ride to a respected state university solely from that PSAT test and so did two of my friends.