Uni #1 for National Merit

In Orange County, nearly 800 students from 25 cities are now semifinalists.

Irvine has the most students in the semifinalist round, with 109 students ? 32 of which came from University High School. Fullerton has 47 semifinalists, most from Troy High School, and Santa Ana had 14.
http://www.ocregister.com/2017/09/1...ith-national-merit-scholarship-semifinalists/

IRVINE
ARNOLD O. BECKMAN H. S.
Biswas, Pradyun
Cai, Angela
Chen, Erik
Chu, Brian
Du, Sara
Gerchick, Darren
Hajali, Patrick
Hyung, Seeun
Kim, Lucas
Lee, Erica
Murray, Daniel
Nguyen, Britney
Pan, Jennifer
Park, Grace
Pham, Elaine
Saini, Rajan
Seo, Minji
Shi, Marva
Suresh, Aditya
Tang, Orion
Teng, Sarah
Tran, Tuong-Minh
Weaver, Tristan
Wong, Jason
Wu, Ziyi
Xu, Michelle

CREAN LUTHERAN H. S.
Liu, Danielle

HOMESCHOOL
McBeath, Lily C.
IRVINE H. S.
Chang, Joshua I.
Hess, Clara M.
Huang, Albert
Ma, Michelle
Patel, Avadh S.
Song, Kathleen A.

NORTHWOOD H. S.
Chang, Robert F.
Choi, Calista S.
Dai, Yutong
Fu, Irene L.
Gonik, Yulia M.
Guo, Amy C.
Huang, Maggie
Kim, Aaron
Kim, Michelle
Kulkarni, Shubham
Lee, Andres S.
Li, Claire
Li, Zelong
Moh, Jasper
Pak, Sarah
Palepu, Vineet
Pandey, Kushagra
Park, Byeongmin
Parthasarathy, Nitya
Sharma, Geetanshi
Tang, Matthew G.
Wang, Mitchell
Yan, Maggie C.
Yu, Serena
Zhou, Harvey
Zietz, Elizabeth

TARBUT V?TORAH COMMUNITY DAY SCHOOL
Veksler, Avigdor

UNIVERSITY H. S.
Ahn, Jiwon
Bota, Peter G.
Chang, Alison J.
Chen, Phil H.
Cheng, Justin
Choi, Baek Gyu
Choi, Minu
Chow, Isabelle
Cranston, Dillon
Dhindsa, Hartejas
Ding, Eirene
Fan, Yuchen
Garg, Anita
Giblin, Laurel A.
Guo, Shiyuan
Hilby, Craig
Kong, Linghao
Kozlowski, Patryk T.
Lee, Juwon
Li, Albert Y.
Liu, Lucy L.
Majumder, Asmita
McPhie, Emily
Mitchell, Audrey E.
Patel, Anushi Y.
Patel, Ishana
Sharma, Neal N.
Shin, Yong Jun
Sun, Dylan
Sun, Kexin C.
Wong, Jessica
Zhang, Elaine Y.
Zhao, Ashley
Zhao, Yun

WOODBRIDGE H. S.
Chang, Elizabeth P.
Chang, Ryan N.
Chatterjee, Shreya
Chong, Lindsay H.
Fisher, Natali
Kim, Iyoung E.
Kliman, Peter
Koh, Lauren
Le, Dustin N.
Lee, Jefferson K.
Lu, Selena J.
Park, Hannah
Park, Janice H.
Tong, William X.

See, even though Beckman is TUSD, it has that Irvine halo effect. Although, how does that explain Irvine High?

Irvine High lost all the Woodbury students to Portola HS this year, and most of the Cypress Village kids are still of elementary age.  You'll start to see Irvine High start to rise again once the first batch of CV kids (currently in grades 5-8) start to make their way to high school. 

Irvine schools suck compared to the Bay Area.

In the article, the number of National Merits from Monta Vista, Mission San Jose, and Irvington are eye-popping.  Even perennial favorites like Pali and Gunn can't compete.

Keep in mind these kids had to score in the top 1% in the country.  Mission San Jose had 91 students in a single class who achieved this threshold.  Can you imagine the cutthroat competition to be valedictorian in that class?

I was also surprised how poorly Cerritos and San Marino schools did this year.  I guess they are even more overrated than Irvine.

Agreed--Fremont schools are better than Irvine schools. But this list clearly puts Irvine schools in top 3 school districts in entire California--beating Cupertino, Palo Alto, Mountain View etc.

What makes a better engineer or doctor?
One that comes from a cut throat environment or one that comes from an easier one?

If you had cancer, would you want your doctor to be top 5 in Irvine unified or top 5 in Santa Ana unified?

I think most people would choose the Irvine doctor as that doc had to work harder to get top 5 than the other....
Does that mean doctors who used affirmitive action to go to med school are less qualified?

zubs said:

What makes a better engineer or doctor?
One that comes from a cut throat environment or one that comes from an easier one?

If you had cancer, would you want your doctor to be top 5 in Irvine unified or top 5 in Santa Ana unified?

I think most people would choose the Irvine doctor as that doc had to work harder to get top 5 than the other....
Does that mean doctors who used affirmitive action to go to med school are less qualified?

Click to expand...

1. When your hiring for an engineering job HS is most likely not a factor.
2. Patients can see where the doctor went to Med School.

Really impressive testimonial for Irvine schools, which should be the first destination for any professional that wants to live in OC and wants highly competitive public schools. Outside of Irvine though, this list is dominated top to bottom by the Bay Area, with even many schools serving disadvantaged communities (like Piedmont Hills HS in SJC) representing very well. Maybe Irvine can secede and be known as Southern Santa Clara County.

zubs said:

What makes a better engineer or doctor?
One that comes from a cut throat environment or one that comes from an easier one?

If you had cancer, would you want your doctor to be top 5 in Irvine unified or top 5 in Santa Ana unified?

I think most people would choose the Irvine doctor as that doc had to work harder to get top 5 than the other....
Does that mean doctors who used affirmitive action to go to med school are less qualified?

Click to expand...

I hope you're not picking your doctor based on which high school they went too 

jajji said:

zubs said:

What makes a better engineer or doctor?
One that comes from a cut throat environment or one that comes from an easier one?

If you had cancer, would you want your doctor to be top 5 in Irvine unified or top 5 in Santa Ana unified?

I think most people would choose the Irvine doctor as that doc had to work harder to get top 5 than the other....
Does that mean doctors who used affirmitive action to go to med school are less qualified?

Click to expand...

I hope you're not picking your doctor based on which high school they went too 

Click to expand...

Just avoid Kaiser. I know an ex-anesthesiologist turned attorney specializing in medical litigation that told me he has a rich pipeline of cases from Kaiser and to avoid using them if at all possible.

jajji said:

zubs said:

What makes a better engineer or doctor?
One that comes from a cut throat environment or one that comes from an easier one?

If you had cancer, would you want your doctor to be top 5 in Irvine unified or top 5 in Santa Ana unified?

I think most people would choose the Irvine doctor as that doc had to work harder to get top 5 than the other....
Does that mean doctors who used affirmitive action to go to med school are less qualified?

Click to expand...

I hope you're not picking your doctor based on which high school they went too 

Click to expand...

Admin: Thank you for calling Doctor (blank) office.
Caller: Yes, I am in the process of selecting a new doctor. I would like to know what HS the doctor attended.

;D