From National Merit Semifinalist to Finalist?

[RobD]

<p>Post # 828 from the thread: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/696125-psat-scores-national-merit-semifinalists-2009-h-s-class-2010-a-21.html#post1063225946[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/sat-act-tests-test-preparation/696125-psat-scores-national-merit-semifinalists-2009-h-s-class-2010-a-21.html#post1063225946&lt;/a&gt;

Three quotes from this thread concerning SAT scores/moving on to NMF:</p>

<p>IloveAPCal–At least in years past, there has not been an official release of the SAT score a student needs to pass along from semi-finalist to finalist, but the general feeling (based on available statistics and the percentage of semi-finalists that goes on to become finalists compared to average college-bound SAT scores, and given the underlying premise that the NMSQT people are looking for some threshhold SAT score to show a very high PSAT score was not a “fluke”) seems to be that they expect a minimum score of around 650 each in both Math & CR (I’m not sure they even look at the writing score even at this point) to “validate” the PSAT and move someone to finalist status. So if your son had a bad day he might want to give it one more try, frankly not so much as for the NMSQT score as for the boost that higher SAT scores might give him in college admissions.</p>

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<p>The combined score sometimes mentioned on CC PSAT threads for “qualifying” for Finalist from SF is 1950, which amounts to 650 a section. That’s probably about right and not usually not too difficult to attain for SF’s, all of whom had SAT equivalent scores above that.</p>

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<p>IloveAPCal, I called the National Merit number a few months ago when my son got his SAT scores, and the woman I spoke with told me what SAT score he would have needed last year to go from semifinalist to finalist. She said that it changes year to year but should be close to that score. She said that last year Texans needed 215 on the PSAT, but the SAT they needed was below 2000. I don’t remember the exact score. But maybe you can call like I did and ask.

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