I’ve been notified of national merit now!!!
@hopeforthebest82 Congratulations! Though you might be on the wrong thread! This one’s talking of class of 2017, 2015 PSAT. Good luck with college admissions and all.
@hopeforthebest82 could you please explain?
earlier this month you posted
If you took the PSAT this October as 11th grader you won’t be notified of anything yet.
@hopeforthebest82, with your post #4087 you wrote
“Finally got my psat scores, 1200
660 math
540 reading
So disappointed”
If you joke, it 's OK. We need some breaks, it’s too long already. I probably quit too, get ready for SAT this Saturday
@OHToCollege I didn’t say commended had to be lower, I said, it couldn’t be higher:
“The semi-finalists come from the commended pool, so it would not be possible for commended SI to higher than SF SI.”
Commended CUTOFF for Class of 2016 was 202 and the lowest SF cutoff was 202.
Commended CUTOFF for Class of 2015 was 201 and the lowest SF cutoff was 201.
Commended CUTOFF for Class of 2014 was 200 and the lowest SF cutoff was 200.
@hopeforthebest82 did you get the email about released cutoff scores too?
@rosalindsmom …please let us all in on the email? What did it say about the released cutoff scores?
@mozart6023, Wow, you make such a rude sexist comment and then have the nerve to go on a patronizing rant about how privileged I am? Ignored.
I am shocked by the outrageous insulting comments about residents of states like Wyoming and West Virginia. Really, Wyomingites and West Virginians don’t support their kids, they are all poor and homeless and single parents, drug addicts, whatever else you all said. I am not going to go back and review but the sweeping generalizations being made about the residents of some of the low cutoff states were just astonishing to me as well as personally insulting to members of my family from such geographic areas who do love and support their kids thank you very much.
And there are no families dealing with poverty etc. in high cutoff states?
I have seen quite a few kids on here griping about how they could not make NMSF because they can’t afford fancy classes and expensive tutoring. I guarantee you these are not homeless kids being abused by drug addicted parents. They are kids who need to learn that not everything in life us handed to them on a silver platter, and that they can still take personal initiative to make up for a bad teacher, lack of tutors,etc.
Yes, I know people who have dealt with some pretty difficult life circumstances and worked hard to make things happen. In particular, many of them opened their math books and learned what wasn’t being taught in school. Others worked hard to achieve other educational goals. Not going to drag their personal pain out on a public forum.
I never said or implied that any kid can make NMSF if they would just crack a prep book. You all show me how even a typical middle class kid, much less a disadvantaged kid, can make NMSF. I give you $5000. Is that enough? $10,000? The kids who have a shot at it should not be made to feel that they have no chance because they cannot afford tutoring, because that is not true. But yes, I do think it is required that they be kids who have a lifetime habit of reading and who are willing to read to learn.
from collegeboard with a link to their website… said something about NM cutoff scores but the link didn’t work for me… might have been bc the collegeboard website was down that day… should probably check again!! @Tgirlfriend
College Board doesn’t provide cut-off scores for the National Merit competition, and neither does NMSC.
@dallaspiano… you said 226 would be 99.88%tile. How did you get that please? I would like to find DS’s percentile for his SI.
@rb681000, refer you to post #4125.
I know several students who made NMSF or commended and scored 2300+ on SAT though they didn’t bother to do any prep but only took online practice test a few times. However, they are all high IQ kids who pay attention in classes and make good grades with minimum effort.
I think if everyone was taking these tests without robotic prep then PSAT would be a better indicator of student’s strengths and weaknesses. We already have GPA and class rank to know other aspects.
Given all the craziness with the new SAT, go out and take the old version this weekend! At least you are familiar with how scoring works. I encouraged my daughter to take the old version and so glad she did because she’s finished after her Nov 2015 testing :). Don’t think I can deal with NMSF and turn around to deal with the Mar 2016 SAT.
Good luck to all taking the test this weekend!
I may be getting my threads mixed up, but I think someone asked if there are known perfect scores or 226s. My daughter got a 226, but this was not unexpected - her score on the old PSAT in 2014 was 233, and her 226 score this year concords to a 231, I think. Her friend also got somewhere between 224 and 226 (I heard only the total score, and I don’t know what the math/verbal breakdown was) and has an SAT score that would predict a very high PSAT score. I have not heard of other scores in the 220s yet. Our school has had between 3 and 6 NMSFs over the past few years. I may not have heard of all higher scores yet, but if the Georgia cut is between 214 and 218, we’ll probably have some number within the normal range.
@Lea111 what state are you from?
@Lea111 …Congratulations for the great score. Sounds like your daughters score did change that much from last year to this year even though the test changed. I think that is a positive thing. I am hoping the SI is the same or a point lower for Texas.
We are in Georgia (not Cobb County).
@Tgirlfriend Thanks. Yes, that’s right. She does about equally well on old/new PSAT and old/new SAT - makes between 0 and 3 careless errors across the whole test, and then the exact score just depends on the curve. It’s frustrating that the lack of head room means that a lot will be based on a small # of careless errors, but for her, this was the case with the old tests too. Luckily this one - the one you can’t retake - worked out for her.
I realize that what I posted above was ambiguous. I meant to say that our school has between 3 and 6 NMSF EACH YEAR over the last few years, and that a cut score between about 214 and about 218 would probably yield a number in that range for our school, based on what I’m hearing about scores. For whatever that’s worth.
@Lea111, did you mean 228? 228 is the new max score. I asked about perfect scores because of people saying the new test was easier and speculation that this would push the high cutoff to max or extremely close. However, the fact that CB allowed one wrong in math or reading to receive a perfect section score makes me think that there cannot be too many perfect SIs. That and the relative lack of 228s reported among the many very high scores mentioned in this forum.
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