<p>You are correct. It’s going to be difficult for the current sophomore who want to compete for NMSF.</p>
<p>You may be right. Thanks!</p>
<p>Think that the National Merit Scholarship Corp. just administers the whole National Merit process and has nothing to do with the actual testing. I spoke to reps at both places and neither were of any help. Need to get higher up in the chain of command. </p>
<p>I suppose it’s possible they haven’t even considered the issue of a confirming score yet. If I were them, I’d say it can be confirmed by x score on the old SAT or y score on the new SAT. </p>
<p>The NMF process works on percentages. Thus, if every kid is taking the new test, it is likely that the NMSF and the Commended numbers will be a bit lower. I would think that taking the PSAT as a sophomore is still good, as it will allow the student to get used to the test taking situation. Plus, I think some of the material is still going to be the same and so the preparation and practice will not be useless. </p>
<p>How much is the SAT going to change? It’s hard to believe that it will make that much difference. The kids who do well on one version will most likely do well on the next.</p>
<p>Those of you whose kids are prepping for the PSAT a year or more in advance: is this because you are hoping for one of the significant automatic NMF scholarships some schools award?</p>
<p>All 10th graders take the PSAT at our school. They use it as one of the determining factors in deciding which students have a good chance of being successful in AP classes. However even if they didn’t I would still be having my 10th grader take it. I think it will help in seeing what he would score on the current SAT. I plan on him taking the old SAT either in May/June or October. </p>
<p>I’m not talking about taking it in 10th grade, MichiganGeorgia, that’s become the norm in many schools. I’m talking about aggressively prepping for it, worrying to the degree of calling the CB, and so forth.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That’s illogical and statistically incorrect. The test, taken only Junior year, is based on a curve of those Juniors taking that same test. If no Junior ‘sees’ the test early, everyone is in the same, level playing field, taking it ‘cold’.</p>
<p>btw: And this is why you are wasting your time to call the NM program; do you really think that this issue has not come up before? Hint: the test was last changed for the HS class of '06, and the exact same thing happened. Actually, the PSAT and the SAT have been out of sync since that time. With the '06 revision, the SAT includes AlgII problems, but the PSAT does not.</p>
<p>The last time the SAT was changed ds1 was in seventh grade and took the old one for Duke TIP. He was asked by CB to take the new one in March free of charge to see how the old scores in January correlated to the new ones in March. They are watching this stuff.</p>
<p>Actually wasn’t referring to your post. Just commenting. DS is not prepping for the PSAT next week. I want to know how he can do without any prep. He took the PSAT last year as a 9th grader to use to help get into AP World History this year. Unless your kid wants to go to a specific school that gives a really good scholarship for NMF I don’t think I’d have them spend a lot of time prepping for it.</p>
<p>As with MichiganGeorgia, I simply want to know where my 10th grade DS stands. We plan to start prepping for the SAT next summer, before he’s junior year, when he has more free time. With a typical heavy junior year workload, he’ll not be able to do much prepping once school starts. As long as the new prep material is out by next summer, we should be fine. </p>
<p>However, I can see why someone would want to spend time prepping for the PSAT, if they where trying to land a NMF scholarship.</p>
<p>‘aggressive prepping’? Haven’t heard that before.</p>
<p>Good luck getting your kid to prep. Is s/he compliant? I tried, oi. One kid flat out refused. The other begrudgingly completed one math section from the practice test that accompanies the registration materials since math is fun for him and in the hope that I’d quit haranguing him. That was 11th grade. No one takes it in 10th grade in our state. Both of mine have take-it-cold score range that is skin-of-the-teeth NMSF. Prepping would have saved a lot of nail-biting for mom, but they weren’t ready to buckle down and study for standardized tests at that point. </p>
<p>For our family it is all about the large scholarships. Simplifies the money chase to make college affordable when there are so many automatic options to choose from requiring no special scholarship applications, interviews, competition weekends. Even our flagship that offers basically no large scholarships to unhooked applicants offers a one-time $7500 freshman award to NMF. Is there something wrong with going after that money? </p>
<p>I would hope that at least the practice test distributed at registration matches the current actual test. Though I guess one can’t assume anything. </p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Obviously not. 
(My kid was in the “Prep? You have to be kidding!” camp also.)</p>
<p>No prepping happening here other than to read the booklet to be familiar with the question format. A good score would help with some summer program applications. A so-so score might help with motivation for prepping for the junior year PSAT and SAT. </p>
<p>At our school the kids don’t get a practice test since the school handles all the registration. I wonder how many schools even give the kids the practice test. </p>
<p>Last year our district lost their box of practice tests in some administration closet or something. CB said they would happily mail a new box if district would call and request it. I think I was the only one who asked about it, and they didn’t ever find the missing booklets. They are supposed to have those booklets to hand out to everyone. Our school charges $20 some for the test, gives it on a Saturday, not the Weds… We ended up getting S’s booklet from the private HS school he took it at to get the Weds administration and which had all their materials in order.</p>
<p>Though it didn’t do him any good as he didn’t prep anyway, sigh. At our house we have mom aggressively promoting prepping and kids passively-aggressively avoiding it.</p>
<p>I feel like sending my son to a prep course gave him the confidence that he knew what he was doing, and most other kids at the prep course did not. He ended up with perfect math scores anyway, and he doesn’t read a lot so we weren’t surprised about his CR score.</p>
<p>The best thing you can do for CR score improvement is get your kid reading as soon as possible.</p>
<p>My younger son actually attended an PSAT preparation class facilitated by his high school. After several Saturdays, he stopped going as he found his practice scores kept declining. I told him to forget everything they told him about taking the test. He has his own way of doing things, and it works pretty well. He did well on the PSAT, and then did well on the SAT on his first take, but he wasn’t particularly happy with his score, and we permitted him to re-take it, resulting in a sizable increase in score, and an even larger increase in superscore. Between the two takes, he may have done a practice exam or two, but no real preparation. </p>
<p>Both my sons did some preparation for some AP and some SAT II exams, but not for others. They knew where they were strong, and where they still needed work. Our role (Mom and Dad) was to buy the requested preparation materials.</p>
<p>Does anyone know the difference between the new and old PSAT?
Although they will be different, are there some similarities between the two? Does studying for the old PSAT in anyway or partially prepare for the new PSAT next year?
DD17 will be taking PSAT next week. Is her efforts in preparing for the old PSAT a “waste”? </p>