<p>The semi-finalist cut-off is kind of silly.</p>
<p>Your score is your score. If you get a 220 and fail to make a semi-finalist…is that less impressive than someone from, say, Arkansas, who gets a 206 and gets to claim s/he is a semi-finalist? The score will either be impressive or irrelevant to a college admission office. There’s no real reporting pressure – as there is with SAT or ACT scores – to load up on semi-finalists in a matriculating class. If your kid doesn’t make the cut at 223 because of a 222 or a 221, just report the score (although, frankly, the SAT- or ACT-equivalent that the student will likely be sporting will do just fine on the application).</p>
<p>The cut-off can be a good thing in a state (or the boarding school “region”) with a high-end semi-finalist cut-off if you just mention that you received the commendation when you are NOT close to being a semi-finalist in the region. For example, if you received a 208 as a boarding school student, saying you’re a commendation recipient indicates a high score that (by the omission of the semi-finalist award) suggests that it was below the cut-off. How far below is not disclosed – but admissions officers will know that the cut-off is high for your region, so they’ll understand that your PSAT score will be in a range of decent (which is what a commendation score is) to excellent (which is what a score just barely missing the cut-off is in your region). Again, I’m not sure it would be worth the trouble to do that since this all means very little in the face of SAT and ACT score data.</p>