@ohiojr my daughter did no prep and neither do her friends. Most don’t even realize what it can be worth. The ACT is much more common here. (State required it last year.)We do know one girl who is at OU, so my D16 had general concept that it could be great moneywise, if you’re willing to look at schools that offer those big NM merit money.
@MidwestMomTo2 OU has one of the best Meteorology programs in the country so anyone interested in weather would be crazy not to look at OU. I just don’t get why kids don’t prep if they might want to go to a school that offers good money for NM.
LOL! Texas’ high cutoff score is due to… Californians moving to Texas! Ha!
Texas has for years had one of the highest cutoffs in the country, and it has been creeping ever higher for years. The cutoff has been 219 twice in the recent past, and as historical trends shows, a 220 Texas cutoff was just a matter of time. Our public education is excellent, we have top universities, and (and this is significant) an extremely high number of test takers. I’m sure there are smart kids moving here from all over the world, but in a typical year, over 200,000 Texas juniors take the PSAT. A few smart Californians are statistically insignificant. Sorry, but Texas is growing it’s own NMSFs!
@3scoutsmom my D16 didn’t prep only because we thought it was out of reach. I actually told her not to worry about it at all – maybe that helped? Her school takes it as 9th and 10th graders, too, and she was in the 177-187 range. She surprised everyone, including herself, by acing the verbal and doing great on math, too, which is a bit unusual for her.
Obviously she’s a very strong student, but ACT and SAT have tended to be brought down some by math/science relative to her very strong reading/writing numbers. We are thrilled, and she is absolutely considering some schools that give significant NM awards, particularly Drexel, ASU and Fordham (although not automatic, the free tuition scholarship there would be a game-changer.)
@Barfly I stand corrected. My kids are homeschooled until 9th grade and we cover most, if not all the PSAT/SAT skills before they start public school. Our local home zoned public school says they are top ranked but they offer very few AP classes, and limited EC’s and language options and average only 2 NMF a year. I’m very pleased with the public out of district school my kids attend and think they do an amazing job, they average about 20 NMF a year. I really think TX schools are all over the map as far as quality. Don’t even get me started on the Robin Hood funding!
A lot of places are all over the map. We live in a county that last year had my son, one of only two NMSF in the past 14 years at his school, and a school an hour away in the same county had the record for PA with 44 just last year! It’s nuts. And never mind that we live 30 seconds from the MD border, where my son would have just missed, instead of living the dream on his current free ride.
Well, in NM, there’s about 3 high schools that produce sizable numbers of NMSFs (sizable in NM terms that is, like 30-50), 2 privates and one public up in Los Alamos. Except for that it’s spotty, but then again, our state overall is usually fighting Mississippi and other such places for the bottom 3 in the nation. But that was good for me, I didn’t have to score that high to qualify. NM’s qualifying score went down if that list is correct - I believe it went from 210 to 208.
@albert69 FYI- there are 13 states below mississippi’s cutoff and at least 4 that are tied with it so Mississippi is making strides! It hasn’t been on the bottom in several years
Mississippi’s cutoff this year was 209!
@MidwestMomTo2 , I haven’t been to Drexel or Fordham, but we visited the Barrett Honors College at ASU this summer. It was a great place and definitely worth considering. Only college I’ve visited with a bathtub in the dorm room and an outdoor fire pit! I also hear they serve steaks in the dining hall. I wish I could have gone to college there.
@GTAustin she’s considering ASU for journalism, which isn’t based in Tempe but I’m not sure if they start in downtown Phoenix as freshman. I would hate for her to miss out on those dorms! We will likely visit, depending on what happens after East Coast trip. She’s also considering Missouri (OOS tuition waived) and Nebraska (free tuition), possibly USC, but we’d need more financial aid for that to happen.
I do know the Tempe location has the Barrett there as well and a pool of the roof for their students. It still sounded quite nice.
Sorry, the downtown location has the pool on the roof, not Tempe.
Still upset about the National Achievement transition…
Do any of you know the reasoning behind awarding NMSF based on PSAT when the real SAT is what gets you into colleges? I don’t think that any college looks at PSAT as anything useful but why does NMSF take that as a primary criteria although they look at a relatively easy SAT score and GPA to make the cut for a finalist?
I mean the name PSAT itself says that it’s preliminary and nothing significant but somehow the heads at NMSF think that it is critical for awarding scholarships… I know my D didn’t qualify as he she missed by a point (219 in TX) where as she scored a 2370 in SAT. We did NOT even know that PSAT carries this much weightage for awarding scholarships and I am not able to get over this even though I understand that NMSF is a private charitable organization and they can set whatever rules they want but still ?!?
It’s perplexing and I really don’t get it! My teeny-weeny brains is not able to comprehend the rationale behind this… Anyone can put some sense into me???
Btw, congratulations to the ones who made the cut and all the very best in your future endeavors.
@RainGater NMSC has used a test since 1955 to determine their qualifiers…the PSAT since 1971…there have been a lot of arguments through the years that go along with your thinking. All I can say is that many scholarship granters use different criteria and it sounds like your D will do well with many of them.
@RainGater … The name of the test is actually the PSAT/NMSQT (NM Scholarship Qualifying Test), and as @chargerparent posted it has been the gateway requirement for NM scholarships for several decades. When our D1 (Class of '11) qualified we were also totally unaware of the opportunities it could provide. There are a handful of schools here in Michigan that prep their students for the PSAT, mostly as practice for the SAT, and the NM piece of the equation is primarily a bullet point for the school on how many Finalists they have each year.
I firmly believe achieving a high score on the PSAT is actually more difficult than the actual SAT because there are fewer questions and as such every missed question is more detrimental to the overall score. Your D is obviously an excellent student and her SAT score will carry her a long way towards other scholarship opportunities. Every year there are questions about the fairness of the process, whether it’s truly a “National Merit” program when there are different state cutoff scores, etc. but unfortunately I don’t think there will ever be a consensus. I know it stinks to say “it is what it is”…but it is what it is. Congrats to your D on all her achievements she’s had and many more to come.
does anyone know the cutoff for California?
@Wolverine86, @chargerparent: Thank you so much for the insight into the process and we were totally unaware of the importance of PSAT - we found out much later after she completed the tests as she was just taking it for practice/fun. Yes, for fun 
That’s really dumb of us to not research enough of the importance of this test. No one to blame but us for this colossal negligence!
Oh well, live and learn, I guess!
But, the irony is that kids who scored 224 in NJ or in DC do NOT qualify where as a 202 in ND or a 204 in Arkansas qualify - simply mind-boggling. Not to belittle their achievements in any way and apologize if I sound it that way but, to me, the process doesn’t seem fair at all. If it’s a national achievement award, I don’t know why the states have a cutoff and that is another story for another day!
Kudos NMSF for a well thought out and a fair competition. Way to go!
Anyways, that’s life!
CA cutoff is 223.