@Sally17, unless your child is an 11th grader in WY, WV, SD, or ND, I would not count on it, though what matters is her SI. Do you have that?
I’m scuba diving in Bonaire. The wifi here kinda sucks but I’m able to see posts occasionally. Nothing I’ve read surprises me - the commended cutoff is right where I expected it. I still believe our previous guesstimates will eventually be proven to be very close.
Her SI is 202
@Sally17, If her SI is 202, then she will not move forward towards national merit.
@Sally17 Follow this link for information on how to compute selection index score (SI).
http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/understanding-new-psat-score/
On this it says estimated cutoff for Florida is 200/204?
Those scores were estimated before the commended score was released.
@Pickmen my D3 also thought the March SAT was similar in difficulty to the PSAT.
@Mamelot My child did too (think it was similar to PSAT). After studying and doing well on the ACT in February, the extra time on the SAT in March was heavenly. The test gives you PLENTY of time to come up with answers.
@DoyleB Enjoy your scuba diving in Bonaire! Your insights were spot on!
That is good to hear about the SAT because S will be taking the SAT in June. He was too busy with school and club activities to take the March test. I am hoping for similar scores to the PSAT so I don’t have to worry about score confirmation.
@DoyleB – thanks for coming up for air – I wish I were in Bonaire!! Enjoy and yes, I too think your estimates and suggestions were on target!
@CA1543 So I called back NMSC and this time got to talk to the director of scholarship admin and asked if the 209 is the beginning of the 97%. She told me for their purpose, it doesn’t really matter what percentile 209 landed on, it was just selecting 50,000 highest scores out of all actual test takers. There were about 1.6 million juniors that took the test. Their selection process is not about picking the top 3%, it’s picking the highest 50,000 scores, but it just so happens it works out that way math wise.
@slparent – thanks so much!! That makes sense – so at least the 50,000th top scoring test taker got a 209. The lack of a penalty for guessing probably helped scores somewhat – wonder what the curve was for a score of 209 vs. a commend score was last year.
Right, as mentioned before, percentiles are calculated by CB and could have been calculated accurately (based on REAL scores from the October test, but CB chose to be deceptive instead). Calculating the commended numbers is National Merits job and is a piece of cake, sort all scores from highest to lowest and take the lowest score at row #50,000.
Wow. I was 99th percentile, told that 95th and above are basically guaranteed commended, but my SI of 206 won’t cut it. Heartbreaking for me, I really needed this.
almost one year process to determine NMSF cutoff is ridiculous in this age, but we all can’t do anything about it.
What I don’t get is how last year it was 202-240 and this year it was 209-228. Shouldn’t it have gone down from 202 since the maximum score was lowered?
The college board wanted as many kids as possible to take the March, May, and June SATs, so they succeeded by tricking kids into thinking they did better than they did. Shame on them. I would try the ACT.
It all depends on how easy/tough the exam is. Seems like lot of kids did good in English and Math. Reading, some people had difficulty with some passages (Douglas). So as others predicted bottom averages went up but top may have not been and lot of concentration in mid range esp 214-218 range. No one knows 100% until September.
good point.