I would really like to qualify for the National Merit Scholarship in Fall 2016. I want to start preparing now because well my scores are terrible and I’m not sure it’s even possible to increase as much as I need to. My state’s cutoff from 2011-2015 has ranged from 215-223, my freshman year score from 2014 was 155. I don’t have my 2015 score yet (yes I’ve checked college board) I went into my freshman one without any prep and didn’t really try. Is it possible to get a 60 point increase by October, if so how? Here is the breakdown of my 2014 scores:
Reading: 52
Math: 52
Writing: 51
Likely they went up from your Freshman year to your Sophomore year just because you know more information and likely put some more effort into it this year. Obviously the two scores will be on a different scale, but you can use the concordance tables to get a feel of how many points your score would have increased from Freshman to Sophomore year. In my Freshman year, I scored a 163 on the PSAT (CR: 58 M: 59 W:46). In my Sophomore year, I scored a 183 on the PSAT (CR: 63 M: 61 W:59). So, If your anything like me your scores would have gone up with little to no studying for the PSAT itself. This year though, I scored a 1490 (RW: 750 M:740) with an SI of 224. Using preliminary concordance tables to get a feel of how many point I increased, that is about a 67 point increase from my Freshman to Junior year and a 47 point increase from my Sophomore to Junior year, likely at or more than you should need to increase your score based on the likely assumption you did better this year. Because of my situation being similar to yours, I feel like I can tell you what I did to get this increase. First of all, I was lucky enough to have parents who put me in an old SAT practice class. Although this attributed to most of my increase, I always felt the same could be achieved by just working out of a respected companies workbooks (I used C2 SAT books, I’m not sure what to recommend to you for the new PSAT) and researching any missed questions online until you know how to get the correct answer (this is basically all we did except I had a teacher to help me fix my wrong answers). I did this twice a week for two hours each day, focusing on one subject per day. If you could devote more time than this, it would be even better. Also for a few weeks leading up to the PSAT I used the Khan Academy and a test prep site called Method Test Prep that was included with Naviance (not sure if you have access to this, I didn’t at my previous school but do now). This was just used to brush up on knowledge I had previously learned out of the SAT books. One other thing I would advise is to just take tons of practice tests and research test taking strategies and time management so that you can be level headed throughout the entire test (This is another thing we practiced and did at my class).Was some of my increase luck? Maybe, I’d like to think it wasn’t. Was some of my increase based on the fact that I’m a decent test-taker? Probably. Though, I would attribute most of my increase to the fact that I just cared enough to put in the necessary work. I can only come from the perspective from someone who went through a class to practice for an old test, but with new resources out for the new PSAT and SAT I believe that it may even be easier for you on test day as I went in nearly blind as to what the format would totally be). It seems like you care about this score enough that you’d be willing to put in enough work to get the increase you want, and because I did it (I’m not the most special or smartest person in the world), I know it’s completely possible for someone else too. My biggest advice would be to just put in the time and while studying actually be passionate and care about the material you’re studying. If you don’t care, you might as well not waste your time trying to improve because you won’t increase your score the amount you want to. I’d be interested to hear what you got on this new PSAT and I wish you the best on your PSAT next year. If you have any questions, feel free to ask! Oh, and sorry for the wall of text haha!
Preliminary Concordance Tables:
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/psat-nmsqt-preliminary-concordance-tables-2015.pdf
thank you so much!