what did you get juicy mango
@GMTplus7 Yes, the new max SI is 228.
@hilariousbanana I got a 217. Most likely not enough, but its fine. I’m a bit sad because I know I could have easily qualified with the old test, but for some reason CB decided to change everything this year, and that’s out of my control.
what state r u in
@hilariousbanana I’m in California, which has historically high cut-offs.
“I really don’t think NM is worth much anyway, especially at top schools.”
I agree in terms of your Harvards, Stanfords etc…But at USC, a top 25 school by most rankings, its currently worth over $100,000 over four years.
How do you convert to 217 juicymango?
@vistajay You are completely right in that regard. I even believe University of Alamaba gives a free ipad for qualifying.
But as you said, it really isn’t worth a dime at ivies and other top schools (I know USC is a top school, but I mean HYPSC etc.). I know a lot of people who qualified for NM but didn’t even include it on their resume because they had other national achievements to show like qualifying for one of the science olympiads, USAMO, playing at carnegie hall, getting a book published, etc.
But for a great number of schools, qualifying for NM does save you a lot of money and provides a big boost in admissions.
There seems to be a discrepancy between the Concordance and actual historical percentages. Based upon posts from this site the cutoffs for 99% are roughly 690V, 720M and 1410 total. From the Concordance these translate to 132 CR+W, 72M and 208 total. According to this chart http://phs.princetonk12.org/guidance/Spotlight/S03A7EC5E-03A7ECF9.1/understanding-psat-nmsqt-scores.pdf, The prior test’s math cutoff for 99% was 74 vs the 72 per the Concordance, and the 99% Section Index cutoff was 215 vs 208 per the Concordance. Verbal is a little more complicated but the 99% CR + V was probably above 140 compared with the 132 per the Concordance.
Based on this analysis, the Concordance equivalent scores are probably lower than what should actually be compared with last year’s NMSF cutoff scores.
@hilariousbanana It says on the “college quickstart” page. Or you can add your individual section scores and multiply the total by 2.
Can anybody guess the SI for Texas?
@JuicyMango Verbal and Math used to be weighted equally, but the overwhelming majority of winners were boys. So they started to count the verbal double in order to allow more girls to win.
Back when I took it I don’t think states had separate state cutoff scores, because I was commended, and Mississippi went a number of years with no commended students – everyone in the top three or four percent was National Merit.
@Plotinus, I am assuming that when the college board made up the concordance table that they used equivalent percentile ranking to set equivalencies between the new and old scores. So if an old score was at 99.5 percentile, the corresponding new score should be also around 99.5 percentile. And if you needed 99.5 percentile to get NMSF in your state, this calculation should all work out as well as you can with a bunch of conversion tables and the new sloppy scoring.
Yes, it’s true that certain groups may have done better or worse in the new format. There’s no way to know if there will be systematic geographical differences. If the high scorers found the test easier or harder, that should be accounted for in the concordance table.
My son (Soph.) got 760 in math and 720 in reading/writing, with a NMSC index of 220. Agree that the NMSC index is bias against the math score, while the Math is far more important than English in college or career.
We are in Washington.
Still no email and haven’t got my score…
I think instead of throwing math under the bus in terms of value, ppl should realize American students aren’t up-to-par in math…I mean this test went up only to Algebra 2. Kids shouldn’t be missing more than 5 imo. Yet -8 is the 99th percentile? idk just my opinion.
@Plotinus Don’t we know virtually for certain that the 2027th score was the cutoff score for that year in California? I think we have more detail than you realize. What I am proposing is this:
If we find the 99% cutoff this year, we could compare it to the 99% cutoff of other years (which I am hoping is published somewhere). Then we can assume that “good” states and “weak” states have roughly the same difference in cutoff from this number each year. I don’t know this to be true, but looking at cutoff data, it does seem like the same states are always at the top and bottom. From that we might have an educated per state guess.
Looking for the lowest number that meets these percentile. If you are one index number below but drop a percent, that would be useful as well.
Best so far:
99% = 211
95% = ?
@yonglu I strongly disagree that math is far more important than English in college or career. Maybe in STEM majors, but in business and pretty much in life, English skills are more important IMO. I say this even though I scored 800 in math.
The SI for Texas last year was 220. You will need to convert your score to last years scale to get an idea.
I have national percentile data for the past 10 years or so (though maybe not this most recent year), that I collected when my son was in The Big Wait.