<p>Righto, PAMom. I nearly have the 2012 and prior state summaries committed to memory.</p>
<p>My son received his PSAT scores and if the CO qualifying score is the same as last year - or a couple points more - he should be able to go to the next step. What is the process? What is the NMS worth? Does it vary by school? He’s our oldest, so new to all of this. Thanks!</p>
<p>I have had to laugh when reading the posts about procrastination, as I am equally guilty!
My son scored a 224 in CA so we have more than a rooting in interest in the same or lower cuttoff scores for 2015–which I think will be the case.
An unusual number of Juniors scored well on last year’s test, as many have noted here and in the 2014 thread. But what I have not seen discussed yet are Sophomore numbers from the State summaries. They correlate with the Junior numbers, not surprisingly. The number of sophomores obtaining high scores on the 2012 test (i.e., our kids) was higher than usual–at least for California (did not check national numbers or any other States. In addition, the numbers for CA sophomores that took the test in 2011were down from 2010. So it supports the Up, Down, Up, Down pattern that would make this a down year compared to last. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>smp512…Congrats to your S on a great PSAT score!! Here’s a link to the stickied thread towards the top of the NM Forum that spells out a lot of the details about the process and will answer a lot of the questions you might have.</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1365011-faq-psat-sat-nmsf-nmf-process.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1365011-faq-psat-sat-nmsf-nmf-process.html</a></p>
<p>To briefly answer your questions; Yes, the amount of scholarship money offered for NMF status varies by school. Some offer nothing, some offer $1K-$2K per year, some offer full-rides. It depends on what type of school your S would be interested in. Here’s a link to a thread listing schools which offer larger scholarships to NMF (see post #833 for the most recent “full list”). As application season gets closer, check any of the schools your S is interested in as these scholarships can change from year to year. Good Luck!!</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation-56.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation-56.html</a></p>
<p>We are from Nevada where the cutoff typically isn’t as high as some of the other states. Last year our cutoff was 212. In the past 4 years before I think the highest cutoff was 207. D took the test last year as a sophmore and scored a 202. She studied for the PSAT this year and did much better and exceeded the 212, so we figure she is above the NV cutoff. Also, we think the cutoff will be lower this year because many smart friends of D scored lower this year than last year, which was a surprise.</p>
<p>So in order to help pass the time, I have a question! What can we learn from the numbers that will supposedly be released in February? Anything to help those of us with kids who scored “on the bubble?”</p>
<p>@MamaBear16, short answer, “No, you won’t find anything to help you determine if your kid’s score will make the cut”. Sorry. This is my take, and I’m sure others will jump in to correct or augment this opinion.</p>
<p>Your analysis of the February data can help you part out how many juniors took to the test in your state, and the number of test takers from your state in each of the sections who scored 75-80, 70-74, 65-69, etc… From these numbers, and the number of previous semifinalists from your state, you can make a more educated guess about the cutoff for your state, when compared to previous years numbers. </p>
<p>However, since the cutoff score is a sum of the three sections, you don’t have any correlation to how many students did well on all three sections, or only one or two of the sections. Since there is such a long wait until late August/September, the numbers will be analyzed by multiple people in a variety of ways, and with some collaboration, a trend will begin to emerge from these data. You might, maybe, possibly get a degree of confidence about the overall swing of scores across the nation. Good luck to your child! I don’t envy your wait.</p>
<p>IL father, thanks for the explanation. Do you know when data is typically released in Feb…early, mid-month, Feb 28? ;-)</p>
<p>I want to say it’s right around the end of the first week of February. @RobD let us know last year the reports were available on February 6th. </p>
<p>So it sounds like it’s not really going to be helpful in determining if a state’s cutoff is going to go up or down. Oh well, I guess we have the long wait until Fall then… :-S </p>
<p>MamaBear16, I think the State Summary data could be very helpful, depending on how clear the trends in the data are. In past years people posting on CC have been fairly effective in predicting whether the cuttoffs will go up or down in a particular State by comparing the number of high scorers in each section of the PSAT with summaries from prior years. If up markedly, portends a higher cuttoff; if down markedly, the opposite. While we wait, one bit of data that makes me think CA cuttoff could go down is the fact that the number of Juniors scoring high on the 2012 test (the Class of 2014) was atypically high, but that same class did not have an unusually high number of high scores as Sophomores taking the 2011 test (whereas this year’s Juniors had lots of high scores on the 2012 test when they took it as Sophomores). So the 2012 test appears to have been easier to score well on than the the 2011 test. The increase in cuttoffs last year does not appear to be the result of a “super class” of test takers in the Class of 2014 (because they did not have an unusually high number of high scorers as sophomores), and the high performance of the Class of 2015 when they took the PSAT as Sophomores does not likely mean they are a “super class” of test takers either. I think the State data will bolster the anecdotal data posted in this thread that it was harder to obtain a high score on the 2013 test than the 2012 test–so in many/most States cuttoffs will go down. But we shall see . . .</p>
<p>ProcrastiDad, I like your logic! We need a 3 point drop here in my DS’s state, so I’m not holding out tremendous hope…but seeing the Feb data will be interesting nonetheless.</p>
<p>ProcrastiDad, thanks for the explanation. I do hope the scores go down (or even stay where they were), and I hope that the Feb. info will at least give us some hint. Knowing the odds would help us in making “the list.”</p>
<p>Well, at least it’s February now. Bring on those State Summaries! :-S </p>
<p>So I’m sitting in my office waiting on the ball, which happens to be in someone else’s court right now, and rather than start a new project while I wait for that ball to be returned, I am playing with prior year’s state summary data for Texas. The ultimate procrastination excuse! For each year I looked at the number of juniors in the 75-80 score range and the 70-74 score range in CR, M and W, and the total of CR+M+W, and compared that to the Texas cut-off for the year. I looked at years where very few students scored in the 75-80 range in one of the subjects, and years where one subject had an unusually large number of students in the 75-80 range. I thought that I would see some correlation between the CR+M+W total score and the cutoff. I did, sort of, but it seems that if one section has an unusually small number of 75-80 scorers, then that seems more important. In years like 2010 (class of 2012) and 2012 (class of 2014), the two highest cutoff years for Texas, there were a large number of students scoring 75-80 in CR, M, W (over 1100 students in each category). In 2011, when the cutoff was 216, only 863 students scored in the 75-80 range in CR. This effect is counteracted, though, if one category has a huge number of students. So when the state summaries are released, I am hoping to see fewer students in the 75-80 range for each subject, BUT I think it will be even more encouraging if there is one category, either CR or M or W, with an unusually small number of students in the 75-80 category. That seems to be a better predictor for scores being lower this year. Based on my non-scientific research, I hope to see fewer students in the 75-80 category for each subject, one subject with a much smaller number of students than last year, and no subject with an unusually high number of 75-80 students. Disclaimer - I am not a statistician and really don’t know what I’m talking about.: :-S Just playing with the numbers while waiting for that proverbial ball to get emailed back into my court… </p>
<p>Hi Barfly. I too have thought a bit about what to look for in the State Summary date once it comes out. I am thinking that in states with high cut-offs, the data that will be most relevant for making a predicition will be found in the number of students scoring in the 75-80 range in each category (and that there is really not much value in looking at the next range of scores, 70-74). I don’t know this for sure, but when I looked at the historical California data, there were so many students scoring in the highest range for each subject that it seems unecessary to look at the next range. Also, the cut-off score is always pretty close (but fortunately below) 225, which equates to an average of 75 in each category. Clearly some students that qualify as NMSF from California score below 75 in at least one category of the PSAT, but few and in some years no students qualify if they average 74 in each category. So looking at top category numbers probably will tell the story for CA, MA, DC, etc.</p>
<p>Anyone disagree?</p>
<p>ProcrastiDad – I’m no expert but I think it’s rare for kids to score in the 75+ in all 3 sections. My uneducated guess is that they do really well in one or two, leaving room for a <74 in at least one. Even with 3 74s, a kids would have missed the CA cutoff by just one point… My point is that if they only release the data on the 3 scores (and not on the combined total), there won’t be enough info for us to really figure out much. But I hope I’m wrong, and that the scores are all down, and that we will be able to tell that the cutoffs won’t go up again this year in CA. Not sure if I’m explaining this well, but I’m trying… :-S </p>
<p>MamaBear16–You are certainly right that many kids score high in one or two sections and somewhat lower on the other one or two sections. It does not take many mistakes to drop down to the 70-74 range. In years past folks have looked at the total number of students that scored in the 70-74 and 75-80 range to make their predictions. I’ll probably end up looking at both categories. Cheers!</p>
<p>Good luck with the predictions! I’ll be checking here to see if anyone has any… Have to do something to pass the time until next fall when the actual numbers come out. :)</p>
<p>This is probably naive/simplistic, but mightn’t a low # of scores in 75-80 range of one section be an indicator that the test is harder than usual in that section? And if mirrored in other states similar in cutoff score to yours, predict that cutoff scores might go down in many states (assuming scores in some other section aren’t abnormally high to offset the effect)?</p>