I wouldn’t be surprised to see the tippy-top scores come down. While CB can manage “score creep” to a large extent, they will still some room at the top. 225 would make me a bit nervous, if I were the CB.
@speedy2019 it’s a different test this year from previous so you can’t concord AND base your current test on the 2014 data. But you can certainly concord to that data. That’s my big question - what does that distribution look like and did CB consider it when they put together the concordance tables.
@Speedy2019 – regarding the possible outcome that for the highest cut off states could be the same as last year - I think that is unlikely & the Test Masters have predicted a drop of a few points - at a cut off of 216 & 215 for last year they are saying no change for this year though. see the table here – http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/update-psat-scores-cut-national-merit-2016/
We have this data: http://research.collegeboard.org/programs/psat/data/cb-jr
In the fall of 2014, students took the PSAT/NMSQT to help determine their level of readiness for college. The PSAT/NMSQT 2014 State Summary Reports summarize the characteristics, scores and educational plans of the Class of 2016 and Class of 2017. Refer to your School (or System) Summary Reports to compare your local data with the national- and state-level data on these reports.
Highlights of 2014 Junior Data—
1,595,486 juniors took the PSAT/NMSQT.
52.8% of juniors who took the PSAT/NMSQT were female; 47.2% were male.
Junior average scores for 2014 (with comparison to 2013 data):
Critical Reading: 46.9 (0.5 decrease)
Math: 48.6 (no change)
Writing Skills: 45.3 (0.6 decrease)
Is this somewhat helpful?? scores went down a bit in Reading & Writing.
I enjoy reading all these posts, but at the end of the day no one except CB knows the breakdown and all the analysis and predictions (including mine) are mere speculations and not sure it is worth for the students to spend too much on this topic.
@DoyleB, OK. I thought some were saying cutoffs were going to be similar to 2014 cutoffs. That did seem unlikely.
Highs coming down and lows going up (I’ve referred to this as “closing the gap”) is possible. But that doesn’t agree with some postings today of the commended maybe around 202.
I’m afraid the state reports are going to be needed.
@Lea111 That was my point, but you said it better. Why do we need a concordance for PSAT? If we are all juniors, and we ALL make NMSF, we don’t care one iota if they concord, don’t concord, kind of concord. If we don’t make NMSF, it does not matter if it concorded or if did concord. We take the new SAT or we don’t. The PSAT concordance will be used for NOTHIING. So, maybe if I’m a sophomore, I can say “Oh, I would have scored a 200 on the old PSAT. I’m going to study harder.” Nope, they won’t care about that either. I paid NO attention to my kids’ score on the PSAT for their freshman and sophomore years. I figured they would prep for it in junior year and see how they did.
@worryhurry411 He was saying that in a bunch of the SI’s % for sophomores are HIGHER than those for juniors, which makes absolutely no sense. See page 7 here: https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/2015-psat-nmsqt-understanding-scores.pdf, and look at score 1250, and all the way down. The chart says a 1000 for a 10th grader is 65%ile national 61%ile user. That same score for a JUNIOR is 59th/55th. So sophomores trended higher scores (on the same test!) than their junior friends. They must be smarter! No- there is a different pool they compared to - what pool? Who knows.
For people who don’t want to read the full Compass article, this is a nice summary by Compass of the issues the found:
CA (and any state with a cutoff that was previously 223) will be 217
NJ (previously 225) will be 220.
TX (previously 220) will be 214.
GA (previously 218) will be 212.
Florida (previously 214) will be 210.
OK (previously 208) will be 206.
Wyoming (previously 202) will be … 202 still.
Which also means that commended will stay at 202…
Woot! This prediction plus $4.95 will get you a skinny chai Latte double foam at Starbucks.
Across 2014, 2013, 2012 the highest cutoff ever was 225. Looking at those %'les the highest %ile for 224 or 225 is the last 99 or at worst the first 99+.
This year, the bottom of the 99+ is 214. So even bring that up a few notches to account for the change in % calcs and other things, I can’t see the highest cutoff being more than 217 (since 217 is the 4th up from the 99+) Or am I looking at this wrong?
Tomorrow (if I have time) I’ll create my version of the SI table by assuming the current one refers to 3 million kids, converting it to 1.7 million kids, and then shifting it by one spot to compensate for the new percentile definition. Then I’ll look up a few states based on previous cutoffs and post them.
Or maybe I’ll just take testmasters cutoffs and add 1.
@suzyQ7 - yes, what you’re doing is the most likely correct use of the percentile tables (by themselves). There are many possible problems with just using the percentile tables however.
It is not a true percentile over the kids that took the test (and in fact neither were the percentile tables last year). CB tried to make it approximately accurate - but did they succeed?
The concordance tables - which you’d think should be just as accurate as the percentile tables - give totally different numbers, such that essentially one of them has to be wrong.
anecdotes might give evidence that the concordance tables are more correct than the percentile tables.
IOW, guessing that no cutoffs will be higher than 217 is a perfectly reasonable prediction. The problem is that there are many perfectly reasonable predictions at this point in time…
Hey everybody this is a great forum going here! However I’ve been spending too much time worrying about my own score, a 212 from Colorado. I see how the concordance tables very well could be accurate however I’m holding out some hope. If the concordance tables are accurate is there any chance that the cutoff for Colorado could be 212, it has been in the past, and overall what are the chances that the concordance tables are too high and the cutoff scores will be lower? Thanks!
@srk2017 – I agree – for students - at this point I am not sure it is a good use of time (likely true now for over a week but we have enjoyed and benefited from the students who have participated). Likely not for us either as we can’t arrive at any absolute numbers though can give some comfort at certain levels of scores based upon state history. It has evolved though into an odyssey for sure but very interesting, right?
@DoyleB – If you have time to create the chart you describe in post #1710 that would be very helpful. I am still also hopeful that he state summary reports will prove to be beneficial to see how many students are at the top levels in each area. And we can then compare that to our estimates of cut offs which includes understanding of the prior years info.
And if we could tap into the GC reports more they could be helpful - CB overviews says"The educator reporting portal supports effective decision making with a variety of standard reports. School, district, and state users have access to:
Institution-level aggregate mean scores, score band distributions, and benchmark reports for a single administration date or a trend report, with or without demographic breakdowns.
Content analysis reports that provide aggregate student performance in test content areas (subscores and cross-test scores), and on specific questions" so @mamelot & other cc’ers – maybe the GCs can compare to the 2014 tests as part of the trend reports.
“CA (and any state with a cutoff that was previously 223) will be 217
NJ (previously 225) will be 220.
TX (previously 220) will be 214.
GA (previously 218) will be 212.
Florida (previously 214) will be 210.
OK (previously 208) will be 206.
Wyoming (previously 202) will be … 202 still.”
@thshadow, I sure hope you turn out to be right as my GA kid has a 212! I have spent most of my time while reading this thread reconciling myself to the idea that he is going to miss it by a few points.
@micgeaux “The only people who would need to concord PSAT scores would be sophomores.”
@Lea111 “I don’t really understand why anyone needs the PSAT concordances, actually. Maybe school counselors could concord their average reading, writing, and math scores, and see if, say, doing a PSAT/SAT course at school had increased PSAT scores over the last year’s scores. I guess. Or maybe a school would want, as I said earlier, to convert its old minimum PSAT requirement for AP courses for the new PSAT.”
This was posted in another thread a couple weeks ago…hope this helps.
" I called NMSC to get some history for TX & was told that the number of NMSF’s don’t change that much (sorry I didn’t ask about other states) but I would venture to say the number awarded for each state doesn’t change that much from year to year. Also she confirmed to me that it doesn’t change that much because it’s based on population (I think graduating seniors is what she meant). The number awarded to TX has been running about 1300.
As far as concordance tables she told me not to use them as a way to figure out cutoffs for this year! Those tables were designed more or less for GC’s & sophomores to prep for junior year. Of course she told me the only thing I can do is wait, LOL! Well I know I’m NOT going to waste time on those tables unless I have a sophomore & I don’t.
:-*