My DD studied a little bit for the PSAT with a book I bought her. We’re in CA and she went in already saying she knew she wouldn’t get NMSF and that she was going to take the ACT anyways. She did decent enough but did decide not to take the SAT and only the ACT, which she ended up doing very well on.
D17 didn’t study for the PSAT of her own accord but her school makes kids take it in freshman and sophomore year to get some practice. Obviously, this wasn’t very helpful for the class of 2017, but it helps most grades have consistent improvement. D took a practice test in her English class but that was the extent of her studying. She will likely qualify for NM even with these insane and sketchy concordance tables since we live in a low cutoff state
Collegeboard normally publishes individual state charts to show how many/what percentage had a particular score for each section. This is supposed to drive the NMSF more than anything else since they assign the number of NMSFs based on a percentage of national graduating students x1600.
So if your state has 100,000 of the graduating students and nationally there are 4,000,000 then your state gets 16000 x (100000/4000000) = 400. So your kid needs to be in the top 400 of those who took PSAT in your state in 11th grade.
In our high school, a lot of the kids took the psat twice, including my son. He took it once as a sophomore, no studying. He took it again as a junior last fall. No studying. This spring he took a SAT prep class and he studied for the ACT in an online thing. Never did the GC’s suggest the kids prep exclusively for the PSAT.
I agree that those concordance tables are strange. How can a perfect PSAT score concord to a 222 selection index, when the old SI topped out at 240? There would have to be an awful lot of perfect 1520 PSAT scores for this to be right. I guess all we can do is wait and see (for us, the “bright side” is that if no NMSF, then no SAT necessary and testing can be done after SAT2s on June 4).
At our school, all freshmen, sophomores and juniors take the PSAT, so by the time D17 took it “for real”, she already had plenty of practice. Additionally, she took an ACT prep class in the spring of sophomore year, then took the ACT twice in March and June. By the time the junior year PSAT rolled around, she didn’t do a lot of studying for it, but because of the previous prep her scores made a big jump from her sophomore year. She was actually hoping to not have to take the SAT at all due to the redesign and uncertainty associated with it, but when her PSAT scores came back putting her in the likely range for NMSF, she knew she had to take the SAT to get the confirming score. As it is, her ACT score seems to concord the highest, so that will likely be what she submits to schools that give her the option.
@RightCoaster Well, whether I will have a NMSF kid is still up in the air, maybe more so if there’s any validity to those tables on the other thread, but I’m happy to share our experience.
We stumbled upon a recommendation for a college adviser in late 2013 and requested appointments for D14 and S17. We thought D14 really needed the help finding a college/major, but we’d heard there was a long waiting list so I filled out an appointment request for S17 at the same time. D14 didn’t get in before she went off to college a year later, but S17 did in spring 2015. He usually scores well on standardized tests and the adviser suggested then that we do some prep for PSAT as his state assessment scores suggested he might do well enough to qualify for National Merit. We’d never thought much about it or preparing for standardized testing before then. Most kids in Iowa take the ACT, and we had no experience with the SAT. D14 took the PSAT at school as a sophomore but without much encouragement from school or us and no prep. Didn’t even bother to take it as a junior as by then she felt it would be a waste of time.
So, we took S17 to test prep counselor for a few (8 or 10?) weekly sessions beginning late summer of 2015. He mixed ACT and PSAT prep, strongly cautioning that no one knew exactly what the new PSAT would look like and trying to temper expectations. S17 took the PSAT at school. Sign up was voluntary and almost unnoticeable – I had to email the GC to ask about it. No prep occurred at school, and I haven’t heard a peep from the GC since.
S did well on PSAT, but wouldn’t be in contention for NMSF if he were in CA, NJ or TX. Location helps us there. He did great on the October ACT, slightly better on the December ACT and not as well on the March SAT (still good but not as high as his PSAT predicted). I think the ACT lines up better with the state assessments S is used to, even with changes made to the PSAT and SAT.
Overall, I think the test prep gave him a set, structured review time with someone he could comfortably take objective feedback from. In addition, the counselor was able to give him some hints and strategies he used to save time taking the tests that we wouldn’t have known about. YMMV depending on your S’s disposition and ability/motivation to prep on his own.
@Rigjtcoaster - S did study for the PSAT by using the Khan Academy website SAT study program (since there were no study guides for the new PSAT at the time AND he is a computer kid). He also took the PSAT as a sophomore. His school (small) encourages studying. We knew what NMF can get because D15 was a NMF. S can test well when he studies.
@RightCoaster at our school, the sophomores have to take PSAT. My D took it without preparation. For her Junior year PSAT, she did one practice test I think from Khan academy. But the time for this test coincided with her SAT test (old format) for which she as studying a bit
@RightCoaster, my S’s NMSF status is also uncertain (especially if new concordance tables are to be trusted!) but he scored high enough to have a good shot at it based on other published predictions. (We’re in IL, so also typically have more forgiving cutoffs than in many east coast states and CA, etc.). He did not study at all. He did take the PSAT as a sophomore (and we knew from his performance then that he was “in range” of NMSF if his scores would go up after a year). Also he took ACT once as a sophomore. Otherwise, no virtually no test prep here for PSAT or ACT (except he did one practice test for ACT science section before taking it again this year).
I have always been mighty skeptical of commercial test prep programs (but respectfully defer to others who have actually used them and found them beneficial). My worry is that the costs in stress, money, and time are unlikely to outweigh the (probably modest at best) benefits in scores.
My D19 (who has not taken any of these tests yet) tends to score a little lower on standardized tests, so I may encourage her to spend some time studying/preparing when the time comes, but I do not want her to feel that she has to obtain a particular score, or to stress out about it too much. We’ll have her take PSAT as a sophomore and if her scores seem to be “in range” of NMSF (within a percentile or two), maybe we’ll encourage her to do some preparing, but if they are really out of range, I don’t want her spending a lot of time stressing about trying to raise them. I’d rather she spend her time taking challenging classes and doing other activities that are meaningful to her.
@RightCoaster, FWIW, S scored a 191 sophomore year (no studying) on the PSAT. He scored a 218 (1470) junior year w/studying, and is in the hunt for NMSF. Granted he does test pretty well, but it is amazing what a year of maturity and some studying can get you.
@RightCoaster Getting tagged a lot, huh? 
D studied for the ACT over summer of her sophomore year and took several practice tests…4 I think, in about a 6 week period. She did it mostly to get her timing down, and come up with some strategies. She took the ACT in October last year. Then, for the PSAT (I forget when it was taken, sheesh) she took 1 practice test that I think CB had. The plan was to use Khan, but never did. That was about it. I was very confident she could make NMSF because the SI she got on the practice test was about 10 points higher than the (at the time) projected SI for IL. Her SI from the real test was much lower, and she now sits at the bottom of the estimated range, and 2 below the estimated SI needed in IL. Oh, well.
2017 kids have had a rough time knowing exactly what they have to do in order to succeed with all the changes going on. Just trying to go with the flow over here.
My D does well on standardized tests and I firmly believe if she would’ve taken the PSAT seriously and reviewed and prepped she would be sitting pretty right now. She is not the type to ace it without practice though. We did send her to a one hour per week review course (spread out over 6 weeks) but she was not happy to be there and never did any work outside of class.
It really did dawn on her how well she could’ve done when I told her that her ACT score was higher than a likely NMF I met the other day.
@2muchquan - Looks like we have identical kids My S did exactly same for ACT & PSAT. Summer practice for ACT and 1 practice test for PSAT, but took ACT in September. His scores were slightly lower than practice test (due to reading).
Not sure how many are following NMSF prediction thread. Lot of confusing information and people claiming that you need to get perfect score to be NMSF in CA. However, our school has one perfect score this time, but normally have around 10 NMSFs.
Well, I sure as heck hope those concordance tables are wrong bc dd won’t make NMSF if they are correct even though by sites like Testmasters and Prep Scholar she has a 5-6 pt margin!
@mtrosemom If the tables that were posted on the NM thread are accurate, unless you live in a state where the old PSAT NMSF score nearly matched commende, a 218 is probably not high enough.
I really hope those concordance tables are wrong.
@srk2017 If those tables are accurate, there are going to be a lot of very upset people, me included. By all accounts, our dd’s scores were significantly above any predicted high margin for NMSF (not even close.). But by those concordance tables, with the exception of states with cutoffs hovering near old commended scores, she wouldn’t qualify. She would miss our state by as many pts below as we thought her current margin was above!
We’re in a low scoring state and his score is a number of SI points above the highest NMSF score our state has had, so fingers crossed.
Edited for - We will just have to see. I finally was able to look at the new table using my phone. It is looking less likely, but I am ever the optimist.
I hope they are wrong, too! But looking at the 2014 SI–>2015 total score concordance, it seems like maybe there really were a lot of perfect scores? I think there was one at our HS this year (and I’m not sure how many NMSFs we usually have).
It would be nice if they’d list percentiles along with the concordance tables. It would make all this a lot easier to interpret. We’re in a similar boat (well, no 5-6 point margin, but comfortably at the top of the range of most conservative predictions we could find previously), but seems like no chance if these tables are correct. One thing I’m confused about is that everyone seemed so certain about 209 as the cutoff for commended, but scores 10+ points higher than this are not looking competitive for NMSF, and the max possible score is only 19 points higher. There must be a lot of compression at the tippy top of the scale.
@262mom, the 209 has been confirmed by home school and other parents in April.