<p>A lot of people would prefer that, especially those living in high-cutoff states. I understand why the do it the way they do, but there are a lot of injustices in the system (as indeed there would be different injustices if they used a single national cutoff).</p>
<p>It’s true that not everyone has access to the same educational opportunities, but those differences don’t fall neatly into state lines.</p>
<p>so when the state summary data does come out, what can we look for to guess what a state’s cutoff will be?</p>
<p>mathmom, I was responding to someone in the thread, but it did not quote message in reply. I can go look for it though.</p>
<p>I went back and looked and I had simply mis-read pot #66. I thought she asked why someone would score more in a public that an expensive private. Sorry. That is not what she asked.</p>
<p>2014classof: Last year a few of us looked at the following to GUESS whether scores would go up & down: mean scores for each section (compare current year to the last two) along with the # of students scoring in the top 2 bands for each section (did the number of students go up or down?) It was pretty obvious last year that the vast majority of states had means that declined, as well as having less students in the top 1 or 2 groupings of students. What we didn’t have was a change in the # of HS graduates per state, but we were able to have a feel for the movement of scores. </p>
<p>Hope this helps :)</p>
<p>My daughter scored 216 in Texas (I think). You can ask me why I am not 100% sure if you want. But, I suspect it is 216.</p>
<p>My brother scored 216 in Minnesota (he scored 217 last year as a sophomore). He is not a semi-finalist. He is really upset because he was very sick when he took PSAT. However he is happy with his SAT score (2240) and relieved that he done with testing (he took care of subject tests last year with several perfect scores).</p>
<p>lerkin: MN cutoff score this year (for those who sat the PSAT in 2011 as juniors) was 213. MN cutoff has never been higher than 216. So it is very likely your brother will be a NMSF next September when the NMSF lists are released. He does understand that juniors who sat the test in October, 2012 won’t be notified until September, 2013, right?</p>
<p>I really hope they go down just a little bit. I’m only three points under Virginia’s cutoff from last year. I guess I can just hope for it and not stress too much. I had a 214- 80 CR, 57 Math, 77 Writing and I was in the 99th percentile (I’m assuming that’s for the entire nation, however).</p>
<p>Me too! I hope they go down just a little bit, not up.</p>
<p>Argh! Where are the state summaries? It is officially no longer January…</p>
<p>I know! I have been looking for them too. I have not seen them yet. I was hoping someone here would post about it.</p>
<p>Same! I can’t find it. All could come up with was this: <a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/understanding-psat-nmsqt-scores.pdf[/url]”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/profdownload/understanding-psat-nmsqt-scores.pdf</a>
But I don’t think this is really that helpful…</p>
<p>nordic, that’s the one we’ve been using to guess that this year’s cutoffs will be similar to last year’s, but it doesn’t appear that the more detailed state-by-state data has been released yet</p>
<p>I got a 215 on my PSAT.Here in Va, the cut offs have been 217 last year, and 220 the prev. year. My selection index score didn’t have the asterisk, and I ranked 99th percentile, according to the score report “plus”. Sooo, the asterisk means nothing (other than that I’m U.S. citizen, junior, etc.) re: actual score? On the slight chance that I make the cutoff this year if the cutoff has fallen 2 pts., does that qualify my as a NMSF,NMS, MS, or just commended. Sorry, my school counselor has been out, with no real means of getting much explanation other than extrapolating the confusing lit. merit scholar site. Any advice from any quarter knowledgeable?</p>
<p>If the cutoff drops to 215 or below you’ll be NMSF. Otherwise you’ll be commended.</p>
<p>If you make semi-finalist, there is a process to progress to finalist. Then your best bet of getting money is from a school that offers automatic scholarships to finalists. There are also scholarships through some businesses, and some small ones through National Merit directly.</p>
<p>Ok, this will sound so obtuse, but here goes my query. The minimum score to be commended is at about 200, so at 215, I’m already eligible for that status. This means that I’m in the group of 50,000 high scorers nationally (as per the breakdown on the national merit.org site)? So, my placement of 99th percentile nationally means nothing, it’s more a question of whether I’ve scored in the top say, 100 allotted NMSF slots for Va.? Do you have any idea of Va’s avg. number of allotted slots? I know it fluctuates based on state grad. data, but probably not that much. Any gut feeling on where the chips will fall for me in Va.? After looking at the cut off scores for 3 years prev., we always seem to be in the highest cutoff ranges, top 7-ish. Funny, my Aunt was an NMS in '84 in WV. She got a full ride to Johns Hopkins, where she learned that each state has a different cutoff. Sadly, guess where WV always falls? She said her pompous bubble was burst hard.
Thanks for being so patient.</p>
<p>Indeed your national percentile means nothing. </p>
<p>In the [2010-2011</a> NMSC annual report](<a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf]2010-2011”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf) you can see on page 7 that there were 411 semifinalists in Virginia in 2011. Note that although they list the number of program entrants in that table, that number does not influence the number of semifinalists allotted to the state. That number is based on the number of HS graduates in the state (in the prior year, I believe). </p>
<p>Sorry to say that my gut says that Virginia will not fall 2 points this year compared to last. It could, but it seems unlikely to me. Although I haven’t studied Virginia data in particular detail, given that the 99th percentile range this year was the same as last year when VA’s cutoff was 217, that suggests that the test was about equally hard, and so state cutoffs are unlikely to move much, and I think that the tiny states are more likely to have volatile cutoffs than the medium or larger ones (and VA falls into the medium category)</p>
<p>I got a 215 in Texas, and the curve seemed a little harsher than that of past years. Seeing as the cutoff has been 215 quite a few times in the past few years, what are the chances that it will fall to 215 this year? Thanks!</p>
<p>Has NJ ever been higher than 223???</p>
<p>Last year was 216 in TX and the year before that 219. 215 is certainly possible this year, but I wouldn’t count on it. You’re really going to end up being in suspense until the cutoffs are known in September.</p>
<p>rebel, I don’t think NJ has ever been higher than 223. If you have a 223 from this past October sitting, I’d say you “should” be safe.</p>