Maybe I am just being overly skeptical and pessimistic. I would love it if my child’s school had about around twice a many NMSF as historically. It is a small school so there could be wide fluctuations from year to year. And the other data, not all just anecdotes, because some of this is from published school district reports could just be outliers and reporting bias. Please do not take any thing I post that seriously. I just post here because I have no one else to share these thoughts with. I would definitely be considered obnoxious if I discussed any of these questions with any body else I know. Thank you all for listening.
I second that post by @replyback - congratualtions @rb681000!!
@AJ2017, me too
Remind me one Big Bang Theory episode. Something like this
Some one asked Sheldon “How many people were present at your Physics conference?”
Sheldon said: Around 25
The other said: Is that so?
Sheldon sighed: It’s not so, that conference compared to Woodstock
@replyback and @ca1543 Thank you.
I will probably have him just go back to studying for the ACT, and just take his chances on the SAT in March.
@dallaspiano, I love Big Bang! I couldn’t remember the scene you mentioned, so I looked it up…After Howard informs Leonard that there are approximately 25 people in attendance for the Institute for Experimental Physics topical conference on Bose-Einstein condensates, Leonard remarks that “in particle physics, 25 is Woodstock.” LOL
I can’t figure out how to get access to the full set of questions for the October 2015 PSAT. We can log into score report and see individual questions but how does one pull up the entire exam?
Just a general question relating to an earlier post: when doing concordance with a 2015 SI and find a find a particular range of possible outcomes, are ALL the outcomes EQUALLY probable or is the average more probable than the high or low ends?
@Pickmen when I concorded my D3’s 2015 SI I ended up with a range of scores where the combinations in the middle of the range occurred more frequently than the high and low ends.
@Mamelot – Thanks, I was thinking that could be the case. So based on prior work by @firstrodeo and the range he/she gets for a an SI of 210, I would say commended is more likely to be 208 than Testmaster’s 210, assuming we board the concordance train and disregard the published p 11 2015 percentiles. Then, using 208 as the 97% or commended baseline you could probably get some pretty good state cutoff estimates, or at least narrower ones than the min/max ranges posted before by @Speedy2019.
Thank you all for your comments and posts. I have been following this for a few weeks and I would fall into the true believers camp. A few observations.
- If the SI is based on representative group, it should not be that far off from national group based on total score percentiles 1440 vs 1430 for 99+, 1390 vs 1370 for 99 and 1360 vs 1340 for 98. A 10 point difference could also be accounted for with the new percentile definition of >= and slight differences in each group.
- I agree with @theshadow with his observations on SI
- Another way to see if percentiles are inflated is to find schools that routinely generate commended scholars and not NMSF and see if those numbers are similar and also see that there are not any students that could be NMSF based on SI.
Does anyone know the date of when the results come out? I’m so anxious haha.
@mjlmjl – For most student they came out on January 7th or a few days after but some students still cannot log in and get their scores. You can also ask you guidance counselor t school if you have one.
@CA1543 I meant for the results of the National Merit Cutoff. Thank you for the response though!
Studens will know by second week of Sept. at the latest. I think NMSC does the press release around Sept. 9th.
@mjlmjl – the Semi-finalists are typically announced in September as I understand it. That is when the cut off score is also usually known. ok?
Schools are notified a good week or more before the press release. Some will sit on the results until the release, but most seem to notify students right away. We heard September 3rd from our principal, on a year when the press release was September 10th (2014). I actually knew a day earlier, after a homeschooling friend with a one point lower score heard the good news. If your school is one of the slower moving ones, you’ll probably know here first.
Last time our school told us but I wouldn’t know if it was before or after since I didn’t see any press release. Does NM list the NMSF on their site? This isn’t something our local media would report about.
After the semifinal i.e. for the finals and winners, do the cutoff marks make any difference? Or is it that once qualified for semifinals everyone is on equal footing
I still don’t fully understand the press releases. I know some states publish their entire list of semi-finalists, and others do it at the county/local level. Some don’t publish at all. Some schools will share the info independent of the press release. There is a book published that lists all the SF, but this is not made public. I believe it is given to the schools with the qualification information.
Progressing to finalist seems to be independent of making semi-finalist. If the student is in good standing, with a healthy senior year scheduled, it’s a pretty easy process from there. Most make it to that next stage.