1380 98 percentile SI 211 AL
This is exactly the kind of statistical report we would all like to see for the PSAT.
Dreams…
I got a 1270, 95th percentile. I know thats not good enough for national merit, but is it a decent score considering I did no preparation at all and didn’t know a lot of the material in the math section? What can I expect if I study an hour a day or an hour every other day? Which study book would you recommend?
Sorry for all the questions
@3scoutsmom That’s awful! I am so sorry. Oh man, I hope that’s not what’s going on with our school district! biting nails
Any chance of NMSF for a 206/228 in PA? Also is a 1400 total considered good? 1400 sounds high and its 99th percentile but the average score seems much higher, but im hoping thats just a collegeconfidential thing.
@Leafyseadragon – this was posted on another thread – http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/update-psat-scores-cut-national-merit-2016/. Apparently testmasters also went through the tables and concluded that the scores had been compressed. Your child looks good under this estimate, as do a lot of the Texas kids who have been upset by the predictions. This also agrees with my understanding that the top would go down and the bottom would come up (true compression from both sides). My state looks to go up two, but fortunately S17 was three points above last year’s cutoff.
@class0f2017 Don’t let CC scores fool you. The scores here skew high because those obsessed with PSAT scores are the ones posting. 99th percentile is great!
Someone may have already suggested this, but there are way too many pages to read through to figure that out.
It seems that there is a lot of uncertainty over how the current PSAT with an upper limit of 228 would compare to the old PSAT with an upper limit of 240. I also think there is uncertainty over whether the College Board scaled raw scores this year to the current range in a manner that is consistent with previous years. This uncertainly makes it very difficult to predict who would make a national merit cutoff of approximately the top 15,000 scorers by focusing on a comparison of this year’s Selection Index (which is based on the new scaled scores) and historic values for the Selection Index (which is based on old scaled scores).
However, I think the percentile ranking the College Board provides can give a better idea on national merit chances.
It would seem one could assess one’s national merit chances by (i) determining the approximate historic percentiles for the three test sections needed in one’s state for national merit, and (ii) comparing one’s own percentiles reported by the College Board to those historic percentiles. (This year the CB reports percentiles for combined reading and writing rather than individually, but that probably doesn’t matter, and if not, it is probably a reasonable approximation for the individual scores.) There are charts on-line comparing the score for each test section (max of 80) to the corresponding percentile. And there are charts that compare the historic Section Index – the sum of the three scores – to the national merit cutoff for each state. Thus, this should give enough information to allow one to assess national merit chances this year without worrying about how this year’s Selection Index converts, but rather looking only at this year’s percentile rankings (The CB reports two difference percentiles for the various tests; I think the relevant one is the one that is based on other students who typically take the test. I think in most if not all cases, that is the lower of the two numbers).
For example, in Texas, using an historic SI of 220 (I’m not sure if this is the correct number for a historic cutoff but it appears close) appears to correspond roughly to a national percentile ranking of 99% on one of the three test sections and a 99+% (whatever that means) on the two others. Thus, it seems to me that someone in Texas would likely need to have similar percentile rankings this year to obtain national merit. ( I know this doesn’t necessarily help for those who don’t know if their 99% is a “99%+” or not, since the CB only reports up to 99%, I believe) As another example, for someone in Arkansas, with a historical cutoff around 194 (I think), the percentiles would need to be in the range of 98% for two tests and 96% for the other. So someone in that state would need scores about that good.
If correct, this may help some determine that they did not qualify. For example, someone in Texas scoring in the 97% on all tests would likely not make the cutoff (putting aside commended status). But I’m afraid there would still be uncertainty for folks close to the top score. For example, someone in Texas scoring 99% on all tests may or may not make the cutoff.
@ackack TASP = Telluride Association Summer Program. http://www.tellurideassociation.org/programs/high_school_students/tasp/tasp_general_info.html
The reason people are talking about it is because they send email invitations to some high scoring individuals, asking them to apply.
People need to stop asking about it, though, because it’s irrelevant. Selection index is the only thing that is relevant.
FYI:
http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/update-psat-scores-cut-national-merit-2016/
Edit: hahahaha I see that others have been quicker with the cut and paste!
So in 2010, a student could get the highest cutoff for 96th percentile in each category and end up with a 211(cutoff for 99th percentile at the time). If the student got the lowest cutoff for 99th percentile in each subject, he/she would get a 222(the cutoff for 99th+ percentile at the time)…hmm
Can someone summarize what people on this thread have said about estimated percentile/score cutoffs so far? Any estimations for PA? This thread is gaining dozens of pages per day so its pretty hard to keep up.
@gusmahler Thank you! I was so excited to see my score but then I saw the SI and these posts on CC and felt a 1400/206 wasn’t really anything that great.
@class0f2017 a testing website predicted 216 for PA. I’m hoping it’ll go a bit lower than that but I think 206 is a bit too much of a stretch. You should almost definitely be commended though!
@starbesb17 same score from pa haha
@engineur yikes 216/228 sounds really high compared to 217-8/240. I guess I’m out of the running for NMSF, but do colleges that usually give NMF scholarships also give anything to ppl with high test scores? I’m assuming colleges that have significant scholarships for NMFs would give something similar to those scoring similar on the SAT right? Although my SI was lowish, my total composite was 1400 due to a much higher math. I’m not worried about NMSF for the recognition, more for the scholarships awarded with them.
@yuyoyi – no need for us to argue and I thank you for the very interesting link, I stand corrected on the persistence of the gap and I’m not sure whether I would still call that gap “modest.” I was thinking more 20-25 points on average; I don’t care enough to determine the standard deviation and whether a 40 point difference really matters in terms of college acceptances. I’d be interested in seeing demographic information about participants. There were 12,000 more girls taking the test in the year of that report; since boys drop out at a much higher rate, was the mean for girls shifted in such a way as to make the gap look larger? I’d love to see the gap amongst the top 10-25% of each gender. But that really all was an aside – I was mostly bothered by some posts by students earlier in the day that were drifting into the implication that they were being disadvantaged purely to favor girls.
Has anyone heard anything about the score delay in southwest Ohio? It’s starting to be a little frustrating .
Does anyone else still not have their access codes?
@buffalo11 I still do not. Collegeboard tweeted that they should be out tomorrow by noon
@bomber1 Hopefully they do. I have seen everyone else talk about their scores and I still don’t have them. I believe it’s because I put the email I use for school related things instead of the one I made for my college board account.