<p>almafuerte: The 16000 slots for SF are not allocated on a straight score basis i.e. they do not rank the 50,000 and choose the top 16000. What they do is to allocate a quota for each state based on the number of HS students. So for example, if the California Quota is say 500 students (I do not know the real number I just using a number as an illustration). They will rank all California students and the cut off point is where the 500th student lands. So let us say it is 218 for California. Let us say the Wyoming quota is 20 students and the 20th ranked student from Wyoming has a PSAT score of 201, then the cut off for Wyoming is 201. </p>
<p>The above is a little simplistic but I hope it helps explain why the scores vary from state to state.</p>