My DD’18 is still trying to finish her summer homework before school starts on Monday!! She is taking 4AP classes and 3 classes have LOTs summit homework. She really shouldn’t wait until the last few days to work on them! She finished over 150 math problems for upcoming AP Cal AB class, also 90 terms, research, d short essay for AP English Language, but she is still working on AP US history home which has 4 cheapers and each chapter has over 30 questions and several short essays. 8-|
@jjkmom I’m also in the same boat as your DD. Schools starts tomorrow for me and I still haven’t finished my AP Chemistry assignment. It’s kind of funny too. I actually predicted this would happen 3 months ago. However, since I have 7th period AP Chemistry, my assignment isn’t due until the second day of school. I’m definitely going to try and finish it now. GOOD LUCK TO YOUR DD!
@ak2018 I was going to say you should attend the Engineering session at VT, but I see now that you will be visiting next month.
My oldest is a sophomore at VT. She toured on a day where there was nothing specific scheduled for her major, but she and my husband wandered over and found the department head’s secretary, who very nicely introduced them to the Dept Head. She gave them a private tour of the building and talked about admission criteria and expectations for the program. It was a great opportunity for her to get this one-on-one!
Good luck 
I just realized I posted an intro back around page 21 (Dec 2014) and haven’t been back in quite a while.
Update: my boy/girl twins are starting school next week. The took PSAT last year, DD did fine, DS not so much…
DS2018 - English3, US History 2, honors robotics, broadcast journalism, algebra 2, environmental science, PE/health. His GPA is somewhere around 3.0. He is playing soccer, and will do winter track and lacrosse (played for first time last spring). He worked this summer as a camp counselor in town for 5th-8th graders. Not sure if he will retake PSAT or just focus on preparing for SAT.
DD2018 - English 3, US History 2, honors Italian, honors pre-calc, honors physics, sports & the American public, sociology, She took Health over the summer online and is exempt from PE in school. Weighted GPA is over 4.0 and ranks 14/360. She is a 4th year level 10 gymnast and was offered a full scholarship last summer, she verbally committed to competing for a Division I school in the 2018/19 season. Right now she’s finishing her summer reading, Italian homework and will be self-studying for SAT- probably taking 1st time in Dec.
I’m going to try to keep up with reading this board, I see lots of good info/discussion! (now I have 70-ish pages to go back to!)
New parent to CC here (DD18).
We’ve looked at Unigo, Niche (thanks whomever recommended that here!), Princeton, US News, and CC (obviously), but what are other online resources to look at while researching schools? Reviews, etc.
Does anybody here know how to find your score index from the PSAT? I took a practice test from khan academy and got a 42/48(360) on reading a 41/44(350) on writing and a 44/48(740) on the Math section. This gives me a total score of 1450 but i cant seem to figure out how to get my score index. Im trying to see if I am close to my states cutoff because im pretty sure im really close to NMSF. BTW this is the test i took
https://s3.amazonaws.com/KA-share/sat/scoring-psat-nmsqt-practice-test-1.pdf
@kassh4 - I don’t think the new cutoffs for each state are being released publicly until mid September. Because the PSAT changed last fall to coincide with the new SAT, the cutoffs are also different. You can’t go with the old cutoffs (class of 2016 and before). You will most likely need to wait for the new cutoffs to be released in a few weeks.
If you’re just wondering how to calculate your index score, here is a good description from PrepScholar:
"NMSC will add each section score together and then multiply by 2. Let’s say you got a 30 on Math, a 31 on Reading, and a 32 on Writing and Language. Added together, the sum of these scores comes out to 93. Multiply by 2, and you get your National Merit Selection Index Score - 186.
Put into an equation, this would look like (30 + 31 + 32) * 2 = 186."
The section scores are between 8-38, so the lowest index would be 48 and the highest is 228.
I’ve been following this thread:
to try to get an idea of what to expect the cut off for NM will be. Since they changed the test you can’t use past years as a guide. If DS18 could use last year’s PSAT he would have made it, just hope he can do it again this October!
@3scoutsmom Yeah I saw that thread and someone showed me the formula for the score index. 219 in IL this year im around a 216 its going to be close
@odannyboySF, I like http://www.collegedata.com/. It’s a ton of info that you’d find in the CDS, but much easier to navigate and you can look up all your colleges of interest on one site. It even links to each schools NPC, which they tend to bury deep in their websites. They have some other features such as a matching tool, but I haven’t tried those.
Another great website is one posted by the US Department of Education - it’s http://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/. The site allows you to search by several features, and provides statistics on tuition, fees, loans and grants, enrollment, average SAT/ACT of accepted students, degree programs, varsity sports, retention and graduation rates, crime and safety statistics. The information is fairly recent, too.
Now that we know the new NMSF cut offs are mostly running higher than expected, October 19th seems much closer!
Reminder for anyone who has a kiddo who wants to sit for the October 1 SAT: today is the last day to register for it without paying a late fee.
Does anyone know how to sign our 11th graders up for the PSAT? I don’t want her to miss out this year!! But I don’t see how to do it on the College Board site - is it done through the school?
@GertrudeMcFuzz Yes, it is done through the school.
@GertrudeMcFuzz I believe you would have to talk to your child’s school to see if they offer it, as some schools do not offer the PSAT for all students, at least for free like mine. If your child’s school doesn’t offer it, definitely ask them if he can just take the test on the test day at his school. If the answer is no, then you’ll probably need to talk to the other schools around you where students do take the October PSAT. Here is a link to the College Board’s PSAT High School Search Tool: https://ordering.collegeboard.org/testordering/publicSearch
Thanks both. She’s taken it the last two years, but since this is the qualifying year, I want to be sure we don’t miss an announcement or a deadline.
Also - don’t forget if you or your spouse works at a company where they also do a PSAT-based scholarship program to register your child for that!
My husband’s company has a program administered by the NMSF folks and he registered our son to be considered for it a couple weeks ago.
Good morning, I’m a new parent to this site. I have a son who is a Jr. this year at a public charter school. He scored pretty well last year on the PSAT, but should be interesting to see if he’s improved this year.
Welcome @svcamom! Is you son looking at schools that offer National Merit Scholarships?