<p>j'adoube: did your S get his notification in the first wave or the second wave? That will tell you which score was used. The 143 is actually higher (equivalent to a 1600) than the 1560. Also, don't know how low Florida goes in SAT--whether they get down as low as 1560.</p>
<p>^^wjb</p>
<p>I can't say for this year, but I can definitely say for last year that they did not prefer a 1560 to a 143. They preferred 141 to 1590, which makes perfect sense from the concordance table linked by curmudgeon.</p>
<p>OK, QM, here comes the part where I get REAL mathematically challenged. Can you explain how you know they preferred 141 to 1590? Do you know Kid A with a 141 who was in, and Kid B with a 1590 who was out?</p>
<p>How deliciously inept of our tax payer supported govt. officials doing something that actually has some - perhaps not huge - impact on the lives of young people who are immensely talented and hardworking, and would never make such a mistake themselves. Oh I think this is big. And I also suspect there's a bit of the College Board monopoly over this whole landscape to blame.</p>
<p>Here's the next interesting question that will be impossible to research as well as you amazing folks have done - who gets the gold ring? I do believe the very first question after name-address-phone number on the application asks for SAT AND ACT scores. I believe I saw some speculation that once part of the general pool of Pres. Candidates, it was all about ECs, grades, etc and not test scores. I really wonder. Wouldn't it be so much easier for a literal minded committee to just go with test scores provided the gpa is acceptable? I know there are actually quite a few 1600s and 140-144 scores out there. But what if they decide to look at both? If they are number-driven, I think they just might. The application is as my D puts it "the Mother of all apps" in terms of essays. Are these earnest souls really going to diligently read the thousands and thousands of words of essays about to descend upon them?</p>
<p>
[quote]
And I also suspect there's a bit of the College Board monopoly over this whole landscape to blame.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I think you're on to something, mammall. Interesting that this has surfaced just as ACT is shedding its status as the "wicked stepchild" and gaining in popularity among SAT traditionalists.</p>
<p>Mammall: No, the standardized test scores are only used for the initial selection of candidates--not used for the selection of semifinalists or Scholars. How do I know? My S, a Pres. Scholar in a past year, had a 1560 SAT (small state, fortunately). He was NOT the top SAT scorer in our state, that's for sure.</p>
<p>After the initial selection, it's all about the rest of the application, with emphasis on standing out from the rest in some way and EC's, especially those with a community service flavor.</p>
<p>Congrats to your son, yayverily!</p>
<p>Thanks. He almost didn't fill out the application...you just never know.</p>
<p>Despite my interest in this thread, the PS application itself is a non-starter in our house. Son just isn't willing to tackle a new batch of essays, and I really don't blame him. Besides, with about a kabillion candidates in our state, it's going to be tough to win. ;)</p>
<p>I feel your pain. Here's what you do. Send a form letter to all of the other male candidates in your state (using names and high schools taken from the ED website), explaining that the deadline has been extended to a week after the real deadline. Then your son's app will be the only one sent in on time and he'll be selected by default.</p>
<p>yayverily: first wave</p>
<p>Hmm. Doesn't quite add up. We've been thinking that the first wave for very populous states like Florida would have been 1600 SAT and 144 ACT only. Maybe they considered the 143 as a 1600 equivalent in the first wave, then lowered it to 141 later. I don't believe the SAT of 1560 would make the cutoff in Florida.</p>
<p>No, it probably does make sense. Despite being populous, in 2007 FLorida had only 7 kids who scored 36. <a href="http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/states/Florida.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://www.act.org/news/data/07/pdf/states/Florida.pdf</a> (Compare Illinois, with 68 36 scorers in 2007). If the numbers are similar in 2008, then after skimming off the 1600s and the 144s, they may have had to drill down to the 143 level to come up with the 40 top scoring students in Florida.</p>
<p>Florida's list has 69 academic candidates. The original list had 45. Too bad that you can't find how many had each SAT score by state. The 7 is out of 81000 ACT test takers (97000 took the SAT).</p>
<p>Here's how that could have worked. Let's say there were 25 1600 scorers and 10 144 scorers this year. Not enough to equal the magic 40 number. So they added in all the 143 scorers -- let's say there were 10 of them. That would create an excess of 5, making a total of 45, but no way to get rid of any without getting rid of all. So 45 it was. (This has happened frequently over the years.) </p>
<p>As for the additional 24: Presumably those are the 142s and 141s -- the candidates who were added in after Scholargate erupted.</p>
<p>Hey, I think we deserve a hoorah! for our investigation work. Hoorah! We're not maroons! Good work spies.</p>
<p>What wjb says makes sense. Note that the 141 is technically a 35, and that is where the largest number of the additional 24 came from (since there were only 7 ACT scores between 142-144).</p>
<p>Florida ends up with 69 candidates, including the 1600 SATs and ACTs from 141-144 (which, as we've discussed ad nauseum, equates to the 1600 according to the concordance table).</p>
<p>For those playing the home version of our game, the wjb post in paragraph #1 has been the way it has been.</p>
<p>Paragraph #2 is when somebody this year said "Hey. Wait a minute. The concordance says a 141,142, and 143 are the same as a 1600. You can't take all them and not us."</p>
<p>^^wjb #223</p>
<p>Just looked at this site again, so the discussion has probably gone beyond this point, but to answer the question: QuantMechPrime had 1590 CR+M (1 wrong in M, 0 wrong in CR). Since our state is not very competitive for NMSF cut-offs, I was a bit surprised that this didn't qualify. I called the people at the Presidential Scholars program telephone number from the web site & learned that in our state, a 141 was needed last year, and that 1590 was equated to 140.</p>
<p>To say this again, I am not complaining! With 1 mistake on M, it was sheer luck--from my perspective--that the score was 790 and not 780 or 770. Furthermore, the odds of actually winning are very low! Many students have outstanding accomplishments, meet the eligibility criteria, and still don't win!</p>
<p>But, for the record, it might be useful for others on the site, for me to pass along this datum. (I promise, I won't repeat it, having posted it several times in various forms!)</p>
<p>144 1600
143 1600
142 1600
141 1600
140 1590
139 1580
138 1560
137 1550
136 1530
135 1520
134 1510
133 1500
132 1480
131 1470</p>
<p>Remember, according to the "rules" all SAT scores are converted to the ACT sum of scores equivalent/comparable score.</p>