<p>Hello, everyone! Before I joined, I read all of the current threads on the PSAT completely through to try to understand how NM works in relation to my two questions, but I'm still a bit confused. I know that the cut-off for Commended is set nationally and Semi- and Finalist are by state, and that we won't know anything about Commended for sure until April. But there are still two things that confuse me:</p>
<p>1.) I know the cut-off is done by selection index, not by percentile. However, if 50,000 are commended of anywhere around 1.4 million, then the cut-off should be somewhere in the 96.5-ish percentile. When I look at the cut-off scores for the last several years, it seems that the cut-off is either in the 98 percentile or else the last one or two scores in the 97 (anyone know which one it is?). How does that work? If it is 50,000 out of 1.4 million, shouldn't every score in the 97 percentile be included in the cut-off? Does anyone know what percentile the cut-off has been in previous years?</p>
<p>2.) Because the Writing curve was so much harsher this year due to the new grading (with 2 wrong being a 75 on Wednesday and a 74 on Saturday, as far as I know), do any of you think it conceivable that the cut-off will go down? If it holds or goes up one (as the pattern has been), I will make Commended, but I am confused because my score is 97 percentile (highest score possible in 97 from the percentile cut-offs I read here), and it seems that barely has made it if it even has in the past.
I have spoken to people whose score went down between this year and last but whose percentile went up. Is that a sign that the Commended cut-off will hold/ go down?</p>
<p>and for the percentile question:
last year I had a 203 which was a 96th percentile and made commended.
(a 203 was the cutoff, the score report didn't list decimal places in the percentile)</p>
<p>Thanks! Anyone who might have more info, please do share. :)</p>
<p>Vegan, what I was wondering about was whether that one person's experience with his score going down and percentile going up was just a fluke (maybe his score was on the border and it was just that one score) or if the scores were so much lower this year all around that it was likely that the cut-off would drop. Was that what you were refering to in your question?</p>
<p>I hadn't realized that a 203 was 96 last year, I had thought it was 97, that's certainly interesting. This year 204 is almost 98 (from what I read on the PSAT score thread here) which is a pretty big change! That seems to point to the cut-off going down....</p>
<p>Not only that, but you're into the 98th- not just one over the score needed for 98th, several over. I am assuming this has a lot to do with the scoring for writing- adding between three and four to your score tells you what you probably would have had last year. I'm trying not to get my hopes up, though, because it seems amazing that the Commended cut-off would drop so low.</p>