@mathyone If your method is correct, then I guess a 217 SI is not even close to the cut-off for CA :/.
Ugh @gettingschooled, that’s awful! So sorry! I only ever ventured guesses for PA myself, as I studied years and years of that data. (You can do a lot of data crunching between December and September!) My NMS was class of 2015. Just goes to show you though, when you are that close, you really won’t know until the bitter end.
Hopefully this doesn’t crash anyone’s hopes but 99% means almost nothing for nm. A friend scored 1400 and still had 99%, and that seems far below the cutoff.
@juicymango Mathyone’s post is the best evaluation method given. I would not expect a 217 to be high enough for CA. I would expect even low scoring states to still be close to 205-209.
@PAMom21 do you have any guesses for PA this year? not sure my 215 is going to cut it
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Aww alright thnx. Was I at least close? Do you predict it to be around 220 then? At least I’ll get commended…I think.
@appgodxoxo You are more than safe! Lucky you!
I got 1460(700R, 760M) with SI 216. I’m in CA. I don’t think I’d make it.
any guesses for Illinois?
@EarlVanDorn Many thanks. Our results: user and national percentile both 99th.
Where do you all get the access code from? She never needed a code for last year’s scores. Very confused.
@EarlVanDorn regarding your earlier post #2096 - you are correct! I was just playing with the section-to-test concordance and a 210 last year can correspond to a 215 this year! Yikes!!! (Not saying it WILL correspond but if I just took the simplest calculation of 70, 70, and 70 for each subsection last year that corresponds to a 36, 36, 35.5 which when you take the sum and double you get 215). I could be very wrong here but it seems that the tables are telling us that, for last year’s scores, everything under 215 can be scaled up this year, everything above 220 can be scaled down, and everything from 215 to 220 will be about the same. Bizarre.
I’m going over now to lend my very non-statistical two-cents to the new Prediction thread!
@TheGFG visit studentscores.collegeboard.org for the score.
I’m not sure it’s safe to guess anything just yet. 215 sounds decent for PA, given how close it is to previous cuts, and the expectation of a minimal dip for the 1520/1600 change. But it’s just too early to start making those predictions I think. I’d be very cautiously optimistic though.
Update for the CB/TASP conspiracy theorists – my S17 got 99th percentile nationally (and user percentile too, still can’t figure out the difference), but did not get summer program invites from TASP, Stanford or Harvard (he got one from the summer program run by Columbia, but I think that is because he spoke with the Columbia rep. who visited his school last fall). We live in the southeast, which might be relevant to TASP. In any event, I don’t think it’s fair to call them liars.
On all the scoring debates, let me summarize for folks – the PSAT score (out of 1520) is meant to predict your SAT score (that’s also what the “predicted range” is about). That’s why they combine the reading/writing scores to correspond to the SAT Critical Reading Score (remember the new SAT writing section is optional and scored separately).
The NMSC Selection Index is only used by the National Merit for its scholarship program. It counts the reading and writing separately (which is why strong verbal scorers will have higher index scores than those who do better in math). The fine print of the report (download the pdf version – much easier to read) states that approximately 1.5 million students (us citizen juniors or sophomores who plan to graduate in 2017) are eligible for the program. It also says that if you are one of the top 50,000 scorers (again, only 2017 grads), you will be notified next September. On average (since it will differ by state), that’s a little more that the top 3%. I think the bulk of that group ends up as NM Commended, with 16,000 NM Semi-Finalists who then may apply for Finalists. If you look at the NMF discussions from prior years, you will see lots of kids who made finalist who just barely made the cutoff for SF. This indicates that NMF decisions are based on your application and SAT scores and the PSAT SI is just used to qualify you.
If you look at the numbers, top 99% “ought” to be good enough in most states. However, and this is a BIG however, there are no percentiles provided for the SI score and it does not necessarily correspond to the overall PSAT score. If you slog through the last 20 pages, you’ll see that kids with the same overall PSAT may have SI scores that vary by as much as 4 points because one did better in Math and the other did better in reading/writing. Because of these variations, I wouldn’t use the concordance tables for the overall PSAT score, just the ones for the subscores.
MS2015, I have visited that page countless times. It just has last year’s scores. When I clicked on “missing scores,” it asked for an access code, which D doesn’t have
@mathyone (#2255)
Finding the new curt off doesn’t look like that easy as you mentioned ( I also thought so initially though) .
Take these cases with NMSI score of 206 but with different sub scores
2015 score
Reading Wrtiting Math NMSI
38 38 27 206
27 38 38 206
38 27 38 206
32 33 38 206
35 34 34 206
When translated to 2014 equivalent score using concordance table ( test to section page 4 ) we get
2014 Score NMSI
79 78 52 209
51 78 79 208
79 48 79 206
60 63 79 202
67 65 68 200
and the NMSI varies from 200 to 209 (and you can do the same calculations the other way also)
I guess one has to wait until NMSF comes up with their own magic state cutoffs using the new NMSI.
@TheGFG, I think your D’s must not have been loaded yet. That’s what I saw before my D’s scores posted. The access code is supposed to be mailed out, so check spam email, etc. I hope you guys get them soon.
It appears everyone in my D’s school is in the same boat. The GC said “something is broken.” and cannot retrieve the access codes.
Thanks. There’s nothing in spam, so I guess we still have to wait.
@mathyone’s method is good. I’d point out that if you look on page 3 of the concordance tables, there is a range for the old scores that equal your new score. So, you might want to calculate the range of old PSAT selection indexes that match your new section scores.
For example suppose you got scores of 36, 37, 37.0.
A 36 in reading matches 70-74 old style.
A 37 in writing matches 74-76 old style.
A 37.0 in math matches 74-76 old style.
Adding up the minimums and maximums separately gives an old style range SI of 218-226. You can’t really say which end of that range you scored, because the data isn’t precise enough. An old SI of 218 would work in some states but not all, while a 226 worked anywhere.