Another site has California as 220 for cutoff- are you positive you didn’t make it?
1 Like
I emailed the principal to ask if my son made it and he said no sorry he did not. He had a 220.
Did you take PSAT or Alternate Entry? Art said there are conflicting reports whether AE had an impact on cut off scores. I’m really annoyed because my d had 220 PSAT in CA and 227 SAT AE. Because she took the PSAT, she could not do AE. AE is so much easier to qualify because the scale has a max of 1600.
It was the PSAT. My son would have easily qualified based on his SAT score so it’s very upsetting.
1 Like
I am sorry. My child is in a similar situation— would easily qualify based on the SAT taken just one month after the PSAT. Now anxiously waiting to see if 220 will be enough for Washington state this year.
3 Likes
Same! My son got 217 PSAT in IL but 1560 SAT and perfect 36 on ACT. Doubtful that 217 will make it in IL:-(
Same here - my son has a 220 PSAT so on the bubble for IL. But he had a 1580 SAT and would qualify easily AE. My beef is not with National Merit but with the parents of his peers that had their kids home “sick” the day of the PSAT so that they could submit AE instead. I have no issue with those that could not legitimately test, but there are a lot of AEs out there that are just taking advantage of the situation.
3 Likes
Where did you read that AE might affect the cutoff?
What does AE mean and would they have known ahead of time to skip PSAT and do SAT instead?
Alternate Entry- submission of the sat score. My son already had a high SAT score so he could have stayed home and then qualified based on that.
1 Like
Not sure where I saw it but they may have based the commended score off of PSAT and then added the AE in and then made the semifinalist cutoff for each state.
I read in Reddit that Cali had a cutoff of 2020 max. Hm. Now I don’t know what sources to believe
1 Like
You sure you even applied and sent your score to the program?
per Art, CA is at 221 or 222,
Alabama <= 214
California 221 or 222
Connecticut <= 223
Delaware <= 221
Florida = 217
Georgia <= 221
Nevada <= 215
Ohio <= 216 [based on the score of a friend of an NMSF]
Oklahoma <= 210
Pennsylvania <= 219 [likely]
Tennessee <= 215
I’ve heard of 220 from friends in CA. I think this particular case, the student may have not submitted the forms on the appropriate deadline. You needed to submit a form by April 1st of 2021
If you took the PSAT at your high school there aren’t any forms to fill.
With regards to cutoffs, according to this article AE scores do not impact the cutoffs. The cutoffs were determined by the folks who took the PSAT in October or January.
Won’t all of the students who applied for Alternate Entry with SAT scores push up the cutoffs?
No. The Commended and Semifinalist cutoffs are set based on students who took the PSAT/NMSQT in October or January. Students applying Alternate Entry will need to meet those cutoffs, but their scores do not influence the cutoffs. The somewhat unintuitive result is that pandemic-impacted states could see large increases in the number of Semifinalists without any offset in the number of Semifinalists elsewhere.
And since that post, Art Sawyer has stated that he’s received conflicting information regarding AE and how if affects cutoff scores.
Correct. Automatic submission. The only caveat is if perhaps the principal was in error when he/she stated that your son did not qualify.
I’m assuming your friends with 220 made it? Also, did they do alternate entry or did they qualify by taking the PSAT?