PSAT vs. SAT - Admit This!
Are you a high school junior (or maybe a sophomore) who has taken the PSAT? Maybe you’re the parent of one of those students and you don’t quite understand the purpose of the PSAT (the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test). If you are, then you may be interested in the information that our friends…READ MORE »
<p>I think this article is slightly wrong on the number of recognized students. My understanding is that roughly the top one percent of scorers in each state become National Merit Semifinalists; so each state has a different cutoff score. Almost 94 percent will go on to be NMF, based on having decent grades, an essay, and a good principal recommendation. The top three percent nationally that does not earn NMSF status will be commended students; so commended status is based on national scoring while SF status is based on a state cutoff. Due to a variance in scores, some states have no or very few commended students, since a score in the 97th percentile nationally is enough to be in the 99th percentile for their state.</p>