@Plotinus Interesting information. What does OC stand for in that last paragraph?
Fascinating, thanks for the summaries @Plotinus .
@Mom2aphysicsgeek
OC= Official SAT Online Course
When does the college board officially release cut off scores?
Actually @lmjdad1, the cut scores are never officially released. What does happen though is qualifiers are notified, either by their home school principal with a letter sent to the house, or through their actual school principal with a letter sent to the school. Larger schools will receive full lists of qualifying students, and can typically discern cut scores if they so choose, but for the most part, the cuts are figured out right here by the volume of posters. Joe in TX claims he’s in with a 218, but Bob claims he’s not with a 217. Get enough data, and all of the cuts are eventually known and shared.
As for when this happens, letters are sent by carrier pigeon (okay, so it’s actually regular mail, but not first class and it moves quite slowly) in late August. Students typically find out the second week of September, or thereabouts.
Additionally, schools are notified in April of those students who reached a cut that allows them to move on. Historically this cut has ended up being the commendation level, so that’s usually known in April. Actual students are not necessarily notified. Again this goes through the principal, and merely asks for confirmation of grade and name spelling. This is the first piece of truly useful info, as it sets a basement for qualifying scores.
Thanks for the info… Just a waiting game now.
^ I just edited that with more info @lmjdad1. Yes, it’s a waiting game. In late February of past years, CB has released those state summaries that included info like mean scores per subtest level (math/CR/W), as well as number of high scorers in groups of 5 (total scores in the range of 70-75, 75-80, etc), again broken out by subject. I fear this may be delayed, as the format will have to be quite different given the recent test changes. But you might see that before the April notifications, and that’s always fun to play with.
@Plotinus Thank you for the interesting information.
I mean to link 2014 and 2015 graphs but accidentally put 2 of 2015 graphs. Too late to edit, oh well 
Let the fun begin … Thanks again for the info.
What cut off do we guess for Michigan
Thanks for graphs, payn4ward. I followed the link and saw that 2015 curve is indeed narrower.
@payn4ward Yes I saw the 2014 versus 2015 graphs in the applerouth link.
Is there anyone else on here from Indiana? I did a search through tons of posts…and have found no one to tell their score from indiana but me. It would be nice to see other scores from my state to at least compare. It gets a little daunting to hear of the high scores from CA and NJ area. Awww, I really need to be doing some homework…but this is in my brain!~!
Can someone post the links to the updated cutoff score predictions? Thanks in advance!
http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/update-psat-scores-cut-national-merit-2016/
Here are Testmasters predictions…updated with a prediction of commended at 210
Did anybody see that testmasters is projecting the commended cutoff to be 210? That seems absurd to me. The commended cut off is the top 97% nationally but a 210 is well into the top 99% nationally. Their predictions seems wayyyyyy too high.
@kyrieIrving2 Agreed, I think that the SI table on page 11 is accurate, the CB has way too much to loose publishing fake percentiles. As shady as I feel the national representative samples were, at least they were labeled as such. I think that these would have been labeled as well if they were from a sample or inflated. Would love CB to make a statement on this, though.
So a 213 would make the cutoff for Michigan?
Unless I’m missing something, that Testmasters prediction was the one from Jan. 8th or 9th right after CB released scores. Since that time, CB has released the Understanding Scores report with the SI percentile table provided on page 11. This is more recent info. than the Testmasters predictions and Testmasters would likely need to update their predictions in order to incorporate this new information.
@Mamelot No, testmasters just updated their article today to include the commended cutoff. I’m pretty sure they are aware of the percentile tables.