My daughter is a junior in high school and her school offered a four week prep class for the PSAT. I originally thought it was simply the practice test for the SAT, but they explained it wasn’t. They went on to say that if your child does extremely well on it there’s an opportunity for Merit Scholarships. I also had a father tell me this past week that if your child scores in the 98% rank colleges will actually contact them about coming to their school with offers of scholarship money. Does anyone have any further info. Thanks
The PSAT score from junior year is used to determine national merit finalist status. Students who attain NMF do have some doors opened to them in terms of merit aid and admissions.
Anyone can get college mailings…just check the box on the PSAT registration form.
This is really strange. You talked to the school about PSAT, then talked to
another parent for more information and now you have posted on CC.
Did you already google PSAT wiki for the all the stats your looking for ?
I also have a Jr. I heard of PSAT for the 1st time last yr during sophomore yr.
Wiki gave me a 90% head start before I talked to peers.
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They went on to say that if your child does extremely well
Hopefully they gave you the exact cut off score for your specific state which is a simple google click.
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Good luck to both our kids!
As someone mentioned the 11th grade PSAT score is used to determine National Merit Scholarship consideration. There is a whole sub-forum on this site dedicated to NMS with lots of info. If your child qualifies and is selected as a NMS the amount is at least $2500 which isn’t much these days but the big amounts come for specific schools that may offer basically ‘full rides’ to National Merit Finalist (the step before National Merit Scholars). These are mainly State Flagships like UA, UK, ASU, etc
After your child receives their score the first step is if they are determined a Semi-finalist and the score needed varies from state to state. Some states need a very high score (almost perfect) like CA, NJ, MA where there are a lot of high achieving students bu some states need much lower. So what state your child attends school makes a big difference.