PSAT 2012 Curve?

collegec123
Sat, 08 Dec 2012 17:43:15 +0000

I think I’ve figured it out…

Past “understanding scores” reports have used the language “Number of juniors in the sample.” This year it just states “number of juniors.” So I guess they have been excluding a large number of tests from the data analysis in the past and just using a sample of those who took the test, but not this year.

The “Understanding 2011 PSAT/NMSQT Scores” report lists 1,235,267 as the number of juniors in the sample used to derive the percentiles. In comparing past “understanding scores” to the archived “state summary reports” the numbers do differ greatly each year (2009 has just 1,210,797 in the sample size of the “understanding scores” vs. 1,545,856 in the “State Summary report”).