@MYOS1634 I have never referred to myself as a student unless making reference to things which happened years ago. I don’t know what gave you this impression. If I have ever been less than clear on this I certainly apologize.
My son is a high school junior and will certainly apply to Alabama in order to put his housing deposit in at noon on Oct. 1. I believe he has a high enough score for NMSF, and the Alabama NM package is rich indeed. We will be visiting Alabama, although I don’t know if he’ll actually choose to attend. I’m irritated this my son didn’t prepare more for the PSAT, but such is life. We’ll wait and see if he made it; for now we are operating on the assumption that he did. But I would be livid if some idiot had cheated my son out of five minutes of time on the test and it had resulted in a bunch of missed questions. You can bet the school, the school board, and the idiot proctor would be hearing from me.
If you do not tell people they have done wrong, they will never know. One has a duty to inform them, not only to vent one’s spleen, but to aid future test takers. People like you seem to think the SAT will “get you what you wanted.” The SAT is for gaining admission for college; the PSAT is for getting NMF and lots of money or an added “plus” on one’s application to a selective school.
Now, to be certain, my son will apply to several colleges that don’t give automatic full-tuition scholarships based on National Merit or ACT scores. Certainly being a NMF will aid him in this competitive process. He’s also trying to get his ACT score up to 35 or 36, which I’m fairly certain he will do. Should he get one of these scholarships, there is just no way to know whether the NMF status made the difference or not, but I can assure you it’s better to have it than to not have it.
I have planned for and prepared my children for the PSAT for the past five or six years. They have taken it every year since eighth grade; I’ve put posters on the refrigerator with SAT test-taking tips. My daughter is a sophomore this year and probably made our state’s cutoff; she had a 750 on the verbal but her math score was wretched. We are going to work diligently on the math over the next eight months. No one is going to be allowed to steal this from her next year.
The OP did have a remedy which he didn’t use. He said he was aware of his right to cancel and retake the test, but that none of the testing centers were within driving distance. All I know is that I would have flown my children to Saskatchewan if necessary to retake the test. So the OP may not completely without fault in that I suspect that he could have used extraordinary efforts to retake the test; but maybe not. In some states 16- and 17-year-olds can’t drive and they are pretty much slaves to the parents.
There are plenty of merit scholarships for students who don’t make NMF. And in high cutoff states, tons of exceptional students don’t make NMF. For example, Alabama, cited above, offers four years of free tuition, with graduate school rollover for those with an ACT of 32 or higher. But NMFs get five years, with free freshman room, $3,500 stipend, plus $2,000 toward study abroad. The fifth year means that the student can put about $28,000 towards a year of study abroad, which is essentially a year-long luxury European vacation. The difference in value between the NM and ACT scholarships is about $40-50,000, which is a good bit of money. One-fourth of the Alabama student body has an ACT score of 32 or higher and gets to take small, honors classes. This is likely to be my son’s safety, but it’s not a bad option at all.