The western cutoff for 2017 is 193, in the past it was 186.
@Tgirlfriend
I am not basing it on a connection between the organizations, I am basing it on historically trends.
In the past it has been NHRP < NM Commended=NMSF Wyoming= NMSF the Dakotas < NMSF other states.
But I really hope you are right and I am wrong!
@nw2thisā¦I just donāt see how it is possible for the NMSF for Texas to go past 220 out of 228. That is all I am saying. I think that @PAMom21 is correct about the compression scale.
Fromā¦PAMom21ā¦This supports the scale compression, where lower cuts move up, and higher cuts move down, with a tighter range across the board.
Hi One simple question: I read the college board document and just now called them (Randolph who said their system is down and he did not know the answer to this. Transfered me to a Credit union Master credit card group!!)
@Pannaga ā¦in the past they have always done it by the SI number which is the 3 digit number.
@mphill1tx Did they tell you how they selected NHRP cut off? Did they say how many juniors take the test?
I think we can use this NHRP cutoffs to get an idea of where the commended cutoff will be and also where the cutoffs will be for some of the 97-98 percentile states.
Iāll admit my logic on this isnāt perfect. The 2014 PSAT āUnderstanding Your Scoresā has an SI chart which shows a 202 as being in the bottom of the 97th percentile. Since Commended for 2014 was 202, this chart must be fairly accurate (as we know, sometimes they arenāt!).
Last yearās NHRP South cutoff was 199, which was in the middle of the 95th percentile on the 2014 SI chart. This year it is 204. Last yearās NHRP Texas cutoff was 182, which was in the top of the 89th percentile.
Ethnic groups tend to score the same across tests, so if the new NHRP South cutoff is 204, we can be fairly confident that a score of 204 is in the mid-95th percentile range. We all agree the SI chart that the College Board included with the 2015 āUnderstanding Your Scoresā is deeply flawed, but simply shifting the numbers to put a 204 in the the 95th percentile on the 2015 produces some interesting results.
First of all, a score of 191, which is the NHRP Texas cutoff for this year, remains in the 89th percentile. So the shift seems to hold somewhat true for scores under 204. And from this we can make educated guesses as to what the Commended cutoff will be, as well as what the cutoffs will be for some of the lower cutoff states.
According to my chart, the Commended cutoff for the Class of 2017 will be 208. I donāt think it will be higher; it could be 207. Now, as we go up itās going to get harder, because I think thereās going to be score compression. I think the best guess is that Mississippi and Alabama are going to have a cutoff score of 211, but it could be a point on either side. Iām praying for 211 or less.
For other states, just try to guesstimate the percentile that has generally been required over a number of years. Find that percentile on the lousy College-Board-Provided SI percentile chart that the College Board put out for 2015. Then add seven points to the SI and that should give you an idea of your stateās cutoff.
I believe this is going to break down totally once you get into cutoffs above 99 percent, but I think this should be a very accurate and helpful analysis for the 97-98th percentile states.
Here are the steps again:
I do think this is a somewhat conservative approach. Those who are disappointed by this formula should not lose heart. The PSAT scores are very choppy, and there is just no way to predict with any certainty where these cutoffs will fall. Iād would bet even money that the Commended cutoff will be 208, though.
@Pannaga Was it the College Board you called for that info or the National Merit Scholarship Corporation? College Board doesnāt set the NMSF cutoffs; thatās all done by National Merit. So, someone on the phone at CB wouldnāt have any insight into what NM will do.
NM has always (like since the 70s or 80s) used the 3-digit selection index. See http://www.nationalmerit.org/nmsp.php for their official documents, though there isnāt one for the Class of 2017 out yet that I know of.
I agree that high NHRP cutoffs argues for a higher Commended cutoff and thus state NMSF cutoffs on the high end of the ranges people have been predicting.
@EarlVanDorn ā¦what do you think Texas cutoff will be for NMSF?
@EarlVanDorn - 208 commended level is not consistent with HISD data of appx 8.5K juniors published by Testmasters. If you are looking for ~3% of students (50K out of 1.7M juniors), you will need an SI of 202 (that will give you 260 students in the top 3% of their sample). This is assuming the HISD data is nationally representative or better than nationally representative at the higher end of the scale - commended students and onā¦
Concordance with prior years is completely screwed up this year. The brute force method deployed by Testmasters to figure out the SI cutoff by keeping contribution of HSD at ~60 students at the SF level is the only proper way to determine current yearās cutoff. They have actual data (everyone here is assuming itās the HSD). Really @suzyQ7 made it quite clear as to how easy it is for NMSC to figure out SI cutoff (simply order your spreadsheet in descending order of SI and count the number of students at each SI level) for each states. If Testmasters had access to entire TX data, they can very accurately predict what the SI cutoff should be for the state of TX. Commended level requires history match of higher end scales for TX with that of national curves, and concordance may have a role to play.
@OHToCollege I agree itās not consistent with the Testmastersā sample (which is about the best data so far we have) but the 204 cutoff for NHRP seems to set a baseline. I do not think the highest NHRP cutoff has ever exceeded the national commended cutoff. In fact, I think it has always been a couple points lower. This new data point seems to show commended will not be lower than 204. Probably, it will be around 205/206, which is a bit higher than I would have thought.
@OHToCollege I hope and pray you are right and I am wrong. I think these screwy numbers are exactly why the College Board was a month late releasing them.
If the Commended score is to be 202 (low 97th percentile) and the South region Hispanic cutoff score is 204, that means the percentile required for the Hispanic award has gone from 95.5 to probably high 97th in a single year. Thatās a pretty big jump.
Certainly with the score compression the Commended score could be lower than 208. 207 is possible. In my view, 206 is a possibility, but not likely.
However, this has been a seat-of-the-pants analysis. Iād love to get my hands on the Hispanic cutoff for numerous regions for numerous years. At any rate, these new Hispanic cutoffs give us some very real reference points that I think can be useful. Iāll leave it to others to gather additional information, including cutoffs from other regions and years, as well as better data.
I did some quick research and it does appear that Testmasters analyzed the complete PSAT data for HISD juniors. I just googled historical numbers and they are consistent. So unless other districts really outperformed their historical numbers so that HISD has fewer NMSF than last year, their 219 seems very likely. Iām going with 219 or 220, but hope for my DDās sake it is 219.
Again, really wish I had Plano data. Iām now hearing that Plano students seemed to have done really well. That would give us an idea as to whether really strong districts out-performed their historical numbers.
Does HISD stand for Houston Independent School District? That district is 61 percent Hispanic, and Texas Hispanic scores are very low. 80 percent of HISD students are poor. Did Testmasters disaggregate the scores in any way? If not, the HISD data set is going to be a very poor data set to estimate national PSAT scores.
I can see how Testmasters might be able to get a handle on the state NMSF cutoff score from the HISD data, but not necessarily the Commended cutoff.
@EarlVanDorn HISD does stand for Houston and I am only referring to their latest projection for the Texas cut-off, of which they are very confident. To determine the state cut-off, why do you think theyād need to take out the Hispanic scores? Hispanics also qualify for NMSF.
Wasnāt a stated goal of the new test format to be less ādiscriminatoryā, for lack of a better word? If so, and if CB succeeded - then you would expect Hispanic students (certainly top ones) to do much better than they did in years pastā¦
@EarlVanDorn Yes, HISD is Houston Ind. School District. In July 2014, HISD contracted with Testmasters for a PSAT bootcamp for potential NMSFs (200+ students). However, I donāt know if HISD contracted Testmasters again in July 2015 for the same bootcamp.
Looks like for 2015, they may have used an online āPrepMeā through Naviance to prepā¦could be budget cutback?
I have not come across a blog from HISD talking about partnering with Testmasters in 2015.
@itsgettingreal17 Hispanics on average score far lower on the PSAT than average, and this is especially true in Texas. They make up 61 percent of HSID but only 37 percent of the Texas population. So HISD just isnāt a good model for the state or the nation. You might be able to get a good picture of the very top scorers, but as you get lower, it quits working.
If 202 is the 97th percentile of HISD, then I can see how it might be much higher for the rest of the nation.
@EarlVanDorn But I am not talking about any other state besides Texas. Seems to me that Testmasterās method was correct. They had all the PSAT data for HISD. Historically, around 60 make NMSF. So they ran through the numbers and found the top 60 and bam, thereās a good estimate of the Texas cutoffā¦219. Thatās the only thing that matters for NMSFā¦the very top scorers. Whether their data is predictive of commended, beyond what I care about and I donāt think anyone suggested that Testmastersā Texas NMSF cut-off was a good indication of national percentiles.
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