@crazy4info My kid took practice PSAT tests in 9th and 10th grades and then the real PSAT in 11th grade. He improved by more than 30 points each time, and he didn’t study for PSAT at all. Something like 160, 190 and 221. 218 in PSAT as a sophomore is a very, very great score.
Waited all afternoon to hear from my son after he told me he got a note instructing him to go see his GC. All afternoon (he of course forgot to text me after) and it ends up being a totally unrelated issue about a class. She had told me earlier this week that she would call him to her office as soon as she found something out so I was sure we’d know today! Argh!
On the other hand, if you are making decent money, schools will expect you to pay most of it in tuition, 
.
My son went up 11 points from sophomore to junior year, but half of that growth was from getting that last math question. (The rest came from verbal growth, which had more head room in his case.)
@ailinsh1 Thank you for standing up for DC! @suzyQ7 - Here’s why the DC situation is different from all of the other states: As you know, NMSC has set up “special selection units” for all of the boarding schools in the country by region. They do that specifically because the schools “enroll a sizable proportion of their students from outside the state in which the school is located” (to quote from a letter I received from NMSC). NMSC doesn’t think it would be fair to expect students who actually live in New Hampshire to have to compete against the students from Phillips Exeter. To prevent that they pull all of those boarding school kids out of NH and put them in their own category. NMSC does just the opposite in DC. Last year DC had 44 Semifinalists and only 4 of them were from public schools. Surely some of the 40 students who qualified from DC’s private schools actually live in DC, but dug around in the stats and I’m pretty sure that more than half of those 40 were from outside DC. If NMSC treated us like they treat NH, then they would put all of the private schools that enroll a majority of their school from out of state into a separate category, or they could just include them with the regional boarding schools. DC would then have many fewer Semifinalists, but at least they would all live in the District and our SI cutoff would represent our citizens, not our neighbors.
@Dolemite I respectfully disagree. My kid got As in math before Pre-calculus and then he found it difficult to get A then. He’s not that good in math; yet he scores pretty well in PSAT and Math II Subject Test.
@crazy4info Class of 2017 parents whose kids took it in 10th and 11th can’t actually provide you with very useful information, because the top score on the test changed from 240 to 228 between those two years. My son actually went down 2 points on the SI from 10th to 11th.
@candjsdad – did you finally receive the official letter yet?
@crazy4info I think the PSAT improvement from 9th grade to 10th was about 10 points, and from 10th to 11th about 5 points. 9th and 10th grade was old PSAT, 11th was new PSAT. Our kid was close to the cutoff in 10th grade like yours. Studied a PSAT practice book for the first time before taking it in 11th grade and that was apparently just enough.
@crazy4info My kid had a 208/240 as a 10th grader and no studying and a 224/228 as an 11th grader. Didn’t really study for the PSAT then except to take a few practice tests but had been studying for October SAT very diligently. They can make huge improvements but looks like your child doesn’t need near that kind of improvement to have an exceptional score! Good luck!
@Ynotgo That’s true – wasn’t thinking about that!
South Carolina - 215 is in according to school.
Does anyone know when the press release is?
D had 201, 190 and 224 (1500) each year. Sophomore year was her lowest.
@crazy4info -S had a 191/240 in 10th grade and a 218/228 in 11th grade. A 27 point difference. I think he studied a bit using the Khan Academy prep because there were no books for the new PSAT. He killed the math, did well on English.
@crazy4info My daughter took the old PSAT in 10th and the new one in 11th grade. Her score increased 43 points. And yes, I think she will likely make National Merit this year.
Hi everyone – Let’s try to stay on topic - predictions and reports of score info – hard to navigate and find
important info (reports of scores making NMSF or not) if we are all sharing other views & experiences that tend to overwhelm the data points. Hope ya’ll understand. We can have another discussion later perhaps about some of those things. Thanks!!!
@fossilfriend 9/14 if memory serves me (it’s been a loong coupla days!)
Hey guys! My CA school received the letters today (only 20 students got them!); the lowest score in the room was 1480 if I remember correctly, but one of my friends who had a 1480 didn’t get the letter, probably because her index score was lower. My index score was 222 and I got the letter, fyi.
@stresstasticlife - Did you miss more in math vs English?
Regarding the NMSF fairness issue:
Keep in mind that quality of public education can vary greatly from state to state. It is not a level playing field. My D18 attends the highest-performing public school in our low-performing state. (Makes me think of that old SNL skit with the Donald Trump commercial for Domino’s: “It’s the highest quality of the low quality pizzas!”)
Anyway, after yet another round of cuts to state education funding, at D’s school class sizes are huge, resources are slim (no A/C, textbooks are falling apart), more programs are being cut (foreign languages!), and qualified teachers are leaving the state. Add to that, in an economically depressed state such as ours, there is not as much emphasis on achievement and higher education in general.
So, the bar for students in low-performing states is lower by this one metric. SAT and ACT aren’t curved by location. NMSC recognizes students who shine the brightest in their particular world.
Having said all this…
Using this argument, one could say upper-class suburban students have distinct advantages over inner city and rural students, and that it’s not clearly a state-by-state issue. So, where do you draw the line? Tricky, tricky, tricky…