Now that the expired equine appears to be well beaten, I’ll take this opportunity to share my favorite psat score related facebook post:
“My Vanna got her psat score and out of a possible 1070 she scored a 1030. Love you”
Hopefully, @Speedy2019 will come up something with provided info. Wait and see, my man
@srk2017 this time of year the champagne gets stored in the Three Season Porch". Winter is the 4th season.
@suzyQ7 Yes, DC is the most penalized state. Because most of “our” top students are actually students from Virginia and Maryland who come in to attend academically competitive private schools like Sidwell Friends, where the Obama children and Chelsea Clinton attended. I wrote to the NMSC a while back, complaining about how difficult it was for a child who was actually from DC to qualify. In his detailed defense of their policy (which I still don’t agree with) one of their Executive Vice Presidents did confirm that they consider DC one of the four “selection units” that has a “special status” – the other three being “US boarding schools that enroll a sizable proportion of their students from outside the state in which the school is located,” “schools in U.S. commonwealths and territories,” and “schools in other countries that enroll U.S. citizens.” In the case of all of these selection units this NMSC executive states that “the additional Semifinalists named in these selection units are not subject to representational allocation, and their numbers do not decrease the allocation of Semifinalists in the 50 state units.” As best as I can tell, what that means for DC is the same as what it means for the boarding schools or internationals. We will always tie whatever the top state standard is. So I’m not worried about DC being uniquely higher than any of the other states. I’m just worried about what the highest state level is this year.
@LivinProof - ha! Thank you 
@Speedy2019 - thanks! The fact that this year’s test is so wildly different than previous years has me very cautious with any of this though.
@mamelot - thanks! And yes, 207-211 for WI. Still not convinced though about numbers for this year.
@mnpapa29 - “#3 schools receive scores but not state reports.”
Granted they aren’t full reports, I have seen schools post charts for this year’s test on FB. i.e # of Participants, mean, standard deviation, and graph of how many kids scored in different score ranges.
Do a little tally, look like North TX doing really well 510+ for 2016 NMSF. Unbelievable
http://dallas-area-schools.blogspot.com/2015/09/2016-national-merit-semifinalists.html
Do a little tally, look like Houston doing well 350+ for 2016 NMSF
http://www.yourhoustonnews.com/ranch/news/semifinalists-in-national-merit-scholarship-program-announced/article_dfbcf2e6-02a8-5b1b-8ed9-8c3223b3505e.html
Yes, yes! That was one of my favorites!
@Mamelot @mnpapa29 I received a similar reply from our GC in MN and she has been around 20+ years. I asked very specific questions regarding Selection Index numbers and how many kids were at 210+ along with a few simple other questions. She said all they get is a notification in the fall for the SF’s and she sent me a link to a Wash Post article from a few weeks ago describing the new PSAT. Our school is fairly large suburban, good school, 1-4 SF a year for the past 5 years or so. I don’t believe the GC’s in our state really know what is going on with the new PSAT and they definitely don’t push taking it. You have to pay for the PSAT on test day or else they give you the PLAN.
On another note. Since the SI percentiles seem inflated this year at the lower end 97%, 98% and some 99%'s, it seems likely the commended could rise to the 208 - 210 that is predicted by some. Those states like WV and WY that would normally have kids at 97% are probably now seeing scores in the 99%'s.
Um. Re: post 1887 - that was in response to a previous post that I forgot to tag, and I’m new here, and I couldn’t get it to edit. Going to just bow out for now. 
@dallaspiano Ok, you got any friends at these schools that you can track down some scores for 2015 PSAT scores?
2016 National Merit Semifinalists - Number Per School
This is a list of Dallas Ft. Worth area schools ranked by the number of students who are 2016 National Merit Semifinalists.
Number - School (District/private/charter)
53 - Plano West (Plano ISD)
45 - TAMS @ North Texas (public residential)
36 - Coppell High (Coppell ISD)
33 - Flower Mound High (Lewisville ISD)
28 - St. Marks School of Texas (boys - private)
@SLparents, you probably skip my post #1885
1885
“Do a little tally, look like North TX doing really well 510+ for 2016 NMSF. Unbelievable
http://dallas-area-schools.blogspot.com/2015/09/2016-national-merit-semifinalists.html”
2015
http://dallas-area-schools.blogspot.com/2014/09/2015-national-merit-semifinalists.html
2016
http://dallas-area-schools.blogspot.com/2015/09/2016-national-merit-semifinalists.html
@kikidee9 -how did you figure out those numbers? You are forecasting different different cut offs for states that has identical cutoffs last year (see FL, HI, VT).
Please folks. There is no such thing as “inflated percentiles”. 99% is 99% no mater what the scale. If you have the same number of Juniors taking the test this year as last, than there will be roughly the same number of 99% percentiles. It depends on the number of people taking the test. Was there a baby boom in 1998? Not likely.
@shel29 I’m very confused about this 208-210 commended #. I’m not getting it when I do the concordance tables, and I’m not getting it when I equate the percentile tables.
Concordance: 202 (last year) concords to about a 1380 which translates to a 198 - 203 (I haven’t plugged in more than a few permutations but getting nowhere near 208 - maybe I should just keep trying?).
Percentile tables: a 202 is above the 97th percentile (we don’t have the most recent but 2013 that’s where it shows up). When I inflate that to the current page 11 table I get low 98th percentile = 202. So I conclude that the cut-off will be in the low 200’s again. Perhaps it can be as high as 205 - not sure (I haven’t really worked out the concordance). But 208 - 210? I just don’t see that.
What am I doing incorrectly?
Thanks folk for the TX SF links.
Looking at North Texas, here are the top schools from 2016 Graduating class:
53 - Plano West (Plano ISD)
45 - TAMS @ North Texas (public residential)
36 - Coppell High (Coppell ISD)
33 - Flower Mound High (Lewisville ISD)
28 - St. Marks School of Texas (boys - private)
Same stats for 2015 Graduating class:
66 - TAMS (public residential at UNT)
46 - Plano West (Plano ISD)
33 - Flower Mound (Lewisville ISD)
29 - St. Marks School of Texas (private boys)
24 - Coppell (Coppell ISD)
Two schools had big changes, Coppell 24 vs 36, and TAMS 66 vs 45
TAMS had a change of 21 SFs in 1 year.
Maybe it is possible for Walton in Georgia to have a change of 20 or even 30 students in one year. Hard to accept an increase of 100 though, but 20 or 30 is possible.
Wow. OK, this is a different way to come up with a prediction but let me try to explain.
I am hung up on the different definition of percentile that the 2015 PSAT is using. I decided to see what would happen if I looked at the SI% chart and changed the percentile numbers Not by a single place, but instead by an entire percentile point. So, what is labeled on the 2015 SI% chart as “96%” will equate to those numbers that in the previous analysis (2013) were label “95%”. I decided to move the whole chart up on this basis.
The results look pretty good in terms of important SI numbers we have continued to circle around. Since the only part of the SI% chart split into .5% is the top of the 99, I chose to do this on score 218 bc this score acts different that those preceding it. 217 concords down, but 218 concords slightly higher. Each subsequent score concords even higher. So 218 was the point at which I decided to call 99+ instead of 99.
Check out this chart and see what y’all think?
2015 SI – % – %ile moved up 1% to account for definition change
228 – 99±- 99+
227-- 99+ 99+
226-- 99+ 99+
225-- 99+ 99+
224-- 99+ 99+
223-- 99+ 99+
222-- 99+ 99+
221-- 99+ 99+
220-- 99+ 99+
219-- 99+ 99+
218-- 99+ 99+
217-- 99+ 99
216-- 99+ 99
215-- 99+ 99
214-- 99+ 99
213-- 99 98
212-- 99 98
211-- 99 98
210-- 99 98
209-- 99 98
208-- 99 98
207-- 99 98
206-- 99 98
205-- 99 98
204-- 98 97
203 – 98 97
202 – 98 97
201 – 97 96
200 – 97 96
199 – 96
198 – 96
Would love to hear your thoughts!
@shel29 never mind I think I just spotted where I goofed - I need to take a harder look at this . . .
@likestowrite I did this yesterday and noticed that it seems to take care of some issues about that page 11 percentile table. The issue will be seeing if it’s consistent with the preliminary concordance tables as well - if it does then everything meshes and we can worry about other things :D/
What would really help in evaluating this chart in the previous post is if I could remember the numbers you all have given which tell specifically which level of 99+ the high cut off states usually land upon. I feel like some of the highest states are usually in the first 3 99+ places but I just can’t remember where I read this to check. Depending on that information, chart I gave could be tweaked.