The National commended score is indeed 209. That is a final number. All of the state SemiFinalist cutoff scores have been “determined” as well.
Awesome…thanks
I am laughing so hard at smART? As the code word…Congrats to everyone who made NMSF. It is awseome. I have been reading this board since last year…and my child was definitely not going to make it!!! So interesting. 
In reference to FL my son was told that 217 was the cutoff by his GC. Maybe the person who reported 216 made a mistake with the SI the student had.
It seems that smART had contacts all over the country and not just parents/students. That had to be the fastest those results were confirmed at all, let alone by crowd-sourcing. Big congrats to Compass!
Washington is back to 220 again! Adam has an explanation in the comments.
We have reached 1 million views! wow!! It has been quite a journey this year – congrats to all who made NMSF. Huge thanks to all who have participated in this thread - we’ve learned so much along the way. I wish all of our kids the best as they go forward with their senior year pursuits! They’re going to do great things.
@rb681000 I said before the WA cutoff 221 looks very suspicious to me and I questioned the 221 cutoff because I felt there was no way the WA cutoff score would equal the CA’s cutoff score given how WA fared before.
I don’t question CA’s cutoff of 221 because I know CA’s cutoff score should be below NJ/DC’s cutoff score of 222. Now, if NJ/DC’s cutoff was 223, I think CA’s cutoff would have been 222, not 221.
Thank-you to everyone who contributed over the last several months. As I have younger children, I believe they will benefit from the information. One interesting fact to digest, with the change in scale( 240-228) and the change in scores -3 upto + 9 , is that we have a relative change in scoring of + 9 to +21. This consolidates ranges and I believe allows more misses to based on one or two dumb mistakes and several makes to be based on some good guessing. Hopefully, my opinion is wrong.
@RW1 you are correct. Also something to consider: 32 cut-offs were odd numbered and 19 were even. That’s a significant majority of odds. Most of them probably fell in the “valley” between two big lumps on the distribution of scores. That means you might be one over or, more likely, just one under, the cut-off. Bummer but this is what @DoyleB and @thshadow were predicting months ago.
@mamelot – hit the nail on the head!!
@rb681000 at 6545 - thanks for catching that!
One clarification - I think I’ve been complaining about how misleading the CB PSAT concordance tables were. I just looked back at them, and it’s actually the percentiles that seem to be extremely misleading. The “total to total” concordance table is probably correct. (I’d forgotten that us “true believers” were basing things on percentiles, not concordance tables.)
For example, they state that an old 202 concords to a 1380. Based on commended scores, I’ll state that an old 202 is “known” to concord to a new 209. And a 670M / 710V is a total score of 1380 with an SI of 209.
Old 219 concords to about a new 219 (based on NY state). 219 -> 1460 according to the table. New 730M/730V is 1460 / 219.
So the concordance tables they presented are not crazy.
@thshadow I think you meant an old 209 concords to a new 219. I still don’t think the concordance is anywhere near accurate for a number of cases. For example, a student with a 1480 in CA made NMSF and that score concords to an old 212-213 which is 10 points below the previous 2 years cutoffs. A student in CA could have an SI 6 points above the cutoff, but that score concords to an old value 3 points below last year’s cutoff.
My son missed it by a point in Mississippi, which is a bitter pill. My son’s high school had 39 kids out of about 240 last year with a 30 or above on the ACT, but only one or two NMSF. This year they have two. They have refused to provide any sort of prep class or to promote the PSAT in any way, while other school districts in the state have one that starts in January of the sophomore year and runs until the test date, at which it converts to an ACT prep class, with enrollment limited to students with a reasonable chance of making NMSF.
Last year a bunch of kids tried to sign up for a SAT prep class but were kicked out and told that they couldn’t take it if they already had a 23 on the ACT. Low-scorers from Mississippi have no need for SAT prep – they aren’t going to Harvard. But kids who might get a scholarship worth $150,000 to $200,000 certainly need it. Our school could probably produce 15-20 NMSF a year, but the school simply has refused to help, thus costing our community millions.
With that said, my son didn’t study for the test like he should have and bears the blame for that. Most people are autodidacts; the only real function of school is just to help keep their nose to the grindstone. He’s eligible for other scholarships, but it’s still a potential $50,000 punch in the gut, so I’m annoyed. Life goes on.
@thshadow Are you talking about the pre-May concordance or the one they updated in May? I’ve been comparing the results with the updated May concordance and it still doesn’t make sense to me.
@youcee - no, I did mean 219 -> 219. The cutoff for NY was (old) 219 last year, and it’s (new) 219 this year. Hence 219 -> 219.
CA was 223 last year. old 223 concords to 1470. (I’m looking at page 22 “Total to Total Concordance”.) Given that the new CA cutoff is 221, you can construct a new 740V / 730M, which is 1470 total / 221 SI.
The fact that the concordance table is from old SI to new total score (but not SI) means that it can’t be used directly to make a cutoff prediction.
I had thought that the concordance table was flat out wrong. Now I think that it’s probably reasonable (i.e. it’s not clearly wrong).
When you concord you see that the implied percentiles do NOT match what the tables said in the Understanding PSAT guide but are actually less. Applerouth mentioned this as well. I had always thought the PSAT percentiles were wrong. (User, that is. I didn’t even bother with the Nationally Representative).
Yes - the User percentiles were isaccurate and many thought intentionally misleading as a way of inducing more students to take the SAT. Imagine in the next year or so they’ll have to clean this up.
@EarlVanDorn – I REALLY feel for you and the situation you describe at the school. Wish things were better and kids could get supported more.
No doubt entire plan is to make better scores easier to obtain to induce more Sat takers. Take Utah as example . Even at the highest level we jumped an extra 2 concordance points on psat. Our old 206-208.should have hit 213 but we actually hit 215 which would have concorded to at least 210( probably higher) which we have NEVER hit before. My expectation is that universities will quickly figure out that the SAT has now been made easier as well. This in turn will give the ACT even more momentum and continue to decrease SAT market share.