<p>I'm a rising senior in high school. During my junior year, I did not take the PSAT. I believe that it's a huge deal since almost all juniors in my school take the PSAT. (Out of about 500 seniors, I think around 24 seniors were named National Merit Scholarship Program semifinalists this year.)</p>
<p>When I first took the SAT in the winter, I got a 2210. So, if I had taken the PSAT, I think I probably would've easily qualified for some sort of honor. Now, I am really really regretting that I may have practically thrown away free stuff. If I had taken the PSAT, would I have likely qualified for money?</p>
<p>I'm thinking about applying to some top universities. How bad of a situation am I in, now that I have nothing?</p>
<p>In terms of college admissions, you are not at a significant disadvantage. As long as you have decent SAT scores, then your PSAT scores don’t even matter (in fact, common app does not have you list them). I mean, you won’t have NMSF on your resume but that honestly doesn’t even matter b/c it’s the SATs that truly count.</p>
<p>In terms of money, there’s really nothing you can do about it now. However, I will tell you that it seems like many people seem to do better on the SATs than PSATs (at least the people I’ve talked to) so there was not guarantee that you would have necessarily received NMSF. Either way, don’t worry about it since there’s nothing you can do. Just rest assured that it’s not going to affect your college admissions:)</p>
<p>Most top universities don’t give much (many give nothing at all) to National Merit Finalists.
If you are looking for $, many schools (not top schools) give score-based merit scholarships, for which you’d probably qualify (a common SAT cut-off used for these types of scholarships is 2100).</p>
<p>Yes, you may have qualified for NMSF if you’d taken the PSAT. Not sure why you didn’t take it, but it is too late to worry about that now. You have excellent SAT scores. If you have a great transcript/GPA, this won’t hurt you. Good luck</p>
<p>I don’t know if it is of comfort to know this or not, but a PSAT score equivalent to your SAT score, 221, is not a certain qualifying score in all states, and it is more likely that you would have done a little worse than better last fall vis-a-vis than this past winter.</p>
<p>^ Also, I recall xiggi made a chart of percentile rank comparisons between the SAT and PSAT, in which he determined that 2100 on the SAT was the percentile rank equivalent of 215 on the PSAT. I remember this because my son´s 219 was the equivalent of 2250 - 2270 (not 2190). On the other hand, my son scored a 2000 on the SAT a couple of weeks before taking the PSAT on which he scored 219. So, I believe it is very difficult to make conclusions about how one would do on one test based on the performance on another.</p>
<p>Right. How many kids have we seen with amazing SAT scores, and we’ll ask if they made NMSF and they’ll say “no,” because they “only” scored a 196 or something on the PSAT. </p>
<p>Asianfail (what a name???!!!)</p>
<p>Since you’re looking at top schools that don’t likely give NMF money, the only thing you might miss out on is the one time 2500 award. However, if you have financial need, then you won’t even really miss out on that…since your school will give you money anyway. </p>
<p>However, since you do have a good SAT score, you could apply to a couple of schools as financial safeties that will give you large merit scholarships for that. Do you need financial safeties or wil your parents pay full freight for wherever you go?</p>