<p>My D's (junior) results:</p>
<p>10th PSAT: 228
11th PSAT: 233.</p>
<p>Hadn't taken SAT 1 yet; but her old SAT 1 result from 8th grade (talent search) was: 1450. Minimum prep (tried to do some sample tests from the test-prep booklets - the night before test; not always had the time to finish them).</p>
<p>college board has a study quantifying the range of improvement/decline:</p>
<p>Scroll down to the report on "Sophomore to Junior Score Improvement"</p>
<p>Well, I also go to a school that isn't real big on the PSAT (although, in the school's defense, we did take a lot (3, I think) of the PLAN tests (pre-ACT)), so I didn't take the PSAT in the 10th grade. But here is my info anyway...</p>
<p>10th grade SAT: 2170 (740 CR, 720 M, 710 WR)
11th grade PSAT: 224 (78 CR, 70 M (bad M day), 76 WR (good WR day))
11th grade SAT: 2240 (750 CR, 780 M, 710 WR)
12th grade SAT: 2270 (800 CR, 770 M, 700 WR)</p>
<p>Plus middle school scores: </p>
<p>6th grade SAT: 1000 (550 CR, 450 M)
7th grade SAT: 1190 (640 CR, 550 M)</p>
<p>Conclusions??:</p>
<p>In my defense, there was a real reason for taking the SAT in the 6th grade--I wanted to move up a year in math (I was in pre-pre-Algebra at the time). I didn't make the cutoff (480), so I took it again in the 7th grade. Still, it seems pretty ridiculous to take the SAT as a 10 year old. </p>
<p>My conclusions from the PSAT/SAT are that the PSAT has little bearing on your future SAT score. Even though I got exactly the same score, the breakdown was totally different. My other main conclusion was that whatever grammer knowledge = a 710 on the SAT WR is the amount of grammer knowledge that I have :). Every time that I took it, I thought that the essay and the WR multiple choice went SO well, and every time I was wrong! (Not that a 710 is a bad score, by any means. It was just the lowest score that I received on both the SAT and the SAT II's by far).</p>
<p>I'm not a parent, but I am in 12th grade. My scores between 10th and 11th grade improved a little (I did slightly more prep for the second, but it didn't help much). I think my actual SAT scores were a little higher than the corresponding PSAT scores. I didn't feel that the two tests were really that similiar though.</p>
<p><em>hugs</em>LM</p>
<p>From sophomore to junior year, my d's PSAT scores jumped about 15 points with prep and she was a NMF. (She did not prepare at all for the sophomore PSAT.) She only took the SAT once in the spring of her junior year and scored 2250. Her prep course was not a private course, rather provided by the school district during zero hour (6:30 -7:30 a.m.) during the first two months of her junior year. Since making prep courses available, our district has quadrupled the number of NM Finalists and NM Commended Students.</p>
<p>Oh, and I should add that my school's lack of interest in the PSAT definitely doesn't help with the National Merit numbers. In a class of 800 kids, we had about 10 Commended students and I was one of only 4 Semifinalists/Finalists. So...we didn't even break even with the top 1% deal (hey, some school has to be making up for the thiry-gajillion prep school/magnet school/decent school SF). It looked really bad this year, though, because the HS's in the next town over, which are smaller than our school (650 kids/class) each had about 25 SF's, which is obviously a huge amount.</p>