My school had 17 kids with 208+ and 3 scored a 208. So now there are 14 students that will at least be commended. If the cutoff is 215, there will be 7 commended and 7 SF, but if it’s 214, there will be 10 SF and 4 commended. It’s unlikely that it’ll be an even number though, and 213 would make 11 SF and 3 Commended. @Mamelot
Thanks, @destined4harvard. How many usually get SF vs. commended? Actual numbers would be helpful, if you have them.
BTW your prediction of 215 matches @thshadow’s “pessimistic” prediction for KY from a few pages ago. Here it is again:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19542036/#Comment_19542036
@smilingalong IL seems to be predicted at 218 (maybe 219?). So it’s hard to say that 220 is “safe” but for now you are above the median predictions!
Art from Compass, where is your update???
Edit/update: I guess it’s helpful to look at the high end of his ranges for the time being.
@Mamelot typically 2-3 more commended students but we’ve had an equal number of each before.
@destined4harvard is seven SF reasonable for your school in the past or is that number a significant change from previous years?
Compass article
http://www.■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■/problems-with-new-psat-part-1-inflation/
could explain why the SI percentile in page 11 of
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/2015-psat-nmsqt-understanding-scores.pdf
is very misleading and possibly explains why the commended cut off is 209 instead of 200 or so.
May be CB is over analyzing and producing misleading/confusing reports.
If 215 is the pessimistic cutoff for KY, then do you think that that score holds a good chance (in KY)?
@Mamelot last year there were 6 SF and 8 commended, so 7 of each would be pretty consistent. It’s possible that we could have 10-11 SF and only 3-4 commended, but I think it’s pretty unlikely.
Thanks @destined4harvard that’s really good anecdotal data.
@st8homom it’s hard to say. The “pessimistic” projections provided earlier in this thread are relatively consistent with the high end of Art’s ranges from Feb. (he updated IL already so hopefully that projection won’t move any more). Both are relatively consistent with the concordance tables. Of course, both are also BASED (in part or in whole) on the concordance tables which is going to explain a lot of the consistency. But it’s also important to remember that the concordance tables seem to work for this year’s commended cut-off. Evidence for higher cut-offs just seems to hold together and none of the anecdotal data has been found to contradict that. Hopefully we’ll continue to get more anecdotal data over the next month now that the commended number is known.
Ok, thanks. 
I have some anecdotal information for Virginia, and like @MomNJof2 for New Jersey, it’s not pretty.
S’s school normally has 2-4 NMSFs (2015: 2; 2014: 4). This year, 12 students scored 218 or higher. I don’t have the breakdown, but using the Testmasters chart as a reference, it could shake out like this: 218 – 4; 219 – 2; 220 – 4; 221+ – 2. If that’s the case, the NMSF cutoff for VA could be 221 (coincidentally, Shadow’s prediction). If that happens, NJ and DC may be 223 (VA is usually 3-5 points below these two, but given the compression, let’s assume just 2 points), CA and MA at 222, VA and MD 221, etc. A more optimistic scenario would be VA at 220, which could put NJ and DC at 222, CA and MA at 221, etc., etc.
Shadow, looks like you’re nailing it, at least for the higher states. (See 50-state predictions from board page 257.)
My school is in TX (Houston). My principal told us that the cutoff this year was 209, which seems really low to me. I tried reading the past couple of pages but the discussion is hard to follow. What’s going on?
@marioooooo The 209 cut off this year is for Commended only. The state cutoffs for NMSF won’t come out until this September.
Cross posted
I got a 215 and my school got the letter today that i was at least commended
But the college board website says 200 is 97th percentile so why would the cut off be 209
Because the college board deceived everyone so they would take the new SAT (lots of people now are in the 99%). They call this deception a 'research study" percentile.
So basically the top 1% is equivalent to the top 2 or 3% every other year?
yeah- basically
@a20171 the 209 cut-off means that those are the top 50,000 of eligible testers. That’s a tad over 3% (someone reported earlier that NM said 1.6 million juniors took the test). Obviously that result is way different from the “Research study” - based table that CB included in it’s “Understanding Your 2015 PSAT Scores” so that table should be ignored. Your best bet at understanding your chances of being a semi-finalist is either to concord your state’s previous cut-off to a current estimate using the concordance tables and then compare it to your score, or concord your current score to a previous score (and then compare it to your state’s previous cut-offs). Or check out this set of predictions which another poster recently put together after the 209 was disclosed:
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19542036/#Comment_19542036