@puzzled123 Berkeley is a great school and I’d like to get in. NMS was also important for me to get a better shot at Regents for UCLA/Berkeley. Hope they have some other scholarship opportunities.
@MidwestMomTo2 “$24k at USC, $30k and Northeastern, $20k at BU, near full rides elsewhere.” I’m crawling back in my hole lol.
So what? There are other schools that have full tuition for anybody who meets the requirements, not just National Merit finalists. Like Alabama. There are still lots of options out there.
Yes there are big bucks for National Merit kids from the institutions (see the following link: http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf).
There are also big bucks for kids who aren’t national merit. In fact, the vast majority of merit aid does NOT go to National Merit. They are a sliver of the population of high stats applicants. Northeastern and BU have PLENTY of money for high-stats non-merit kids. (Not sure about USC)
OP needn’t think that his/her chances for significant merit aid are somehow destroyed due to some incompetent proctor. (The proctor should have been reported immediately, of course, and it was most unfortunate that CB wasn’t made aware of this situation because it’s highly likely to be repeated). If stats are high and the school is a good fit the chances for merit aid are very high. USC is a great school but it’s not the only one out there - ESPECIALLY in the great state of CA 
ambitionsquared…as a student i used to let stuff like this eat me up. way back in the day. i think you are smart to realize that you need to find a way past this. I would use your smart brain to think about this…what about kids that take only the ACT? Do you think, logically, that these universities don’t have some attractive equally large merit scholarships for kids that get a 35 or 36 on ACT? and also for kids whose high school doesn’t administer PSAT? NMS is a nice title, but there are many others that you will discover. And the best titles (in terms of money) are those that the college gives you as they hand you that large large scholarship…presidential scholar, trustees scholar, chancellors scholar…there are many merit scholarships out there for you. i hope you get one…or more! And good for you to think this through and get past it without festering too long.
Accept that this unfortunate event will actually help you make a better and tougher person if you can rise above it. And frankly, if you cannot rise above this kind of incident, I don’t know what to say. This is an actual, real life issue you have to learn to deal with, not some PSAT problem. Realize that the way you overcome and accept this challenge is far more important than what happened to you. Face this as a challenge to accept and overcome and learn humility that this can happen to anyone. Bad things can happen to even the hardest working or most talented people. It’s called life.
Obviously, you are a very good test taker and had a lot of academic success so far in your life; but you NEED to laugh at this kind of event and move on.
Ok, so you won’t get a full ride to Wayne State and you won’t get the same stipend as the NMF scholars at UAlabama. You can still get very nice scholarships at those universities if you wish to apply and since top 50 colleges don’t care about NMF (there’s not even space for it on the CommonApp), there’s no reason to think about it still.
What about planning a Spring Break trip to visit colleges in another region of the US? 
@lostaccount I agree with you he might not be able to get a lawyer, and I said as much. Now on to the rest of your comments.
If would be very, very easy to show that he would have made NMS had he had the extra five minutes. The SAT has already dealt with this issue, and they have just excluded a portion of the test from the scoring. You could simply look at the performance on the first two-thirds of the section, for example, and extrapolate a score from that. Damages would vary, depending on where plaintiff wanted to go to school, from a few thousand dollars to $150,000 or more. And it is possible to calculate the harm done to admission chances by not being a NMS; courts make these types of judgments daily. That’s what they are there for. As for the issue of whether it was volitional, it was. She had knowledge that she was doing it, and she did it.
Why would the teacher be immune? I have never heard of teacher immunity in my entire life. There was a duty; the proctor breached her duty; there was possible harm; there is a remedy.
I think the toughest legal hurdle for the OP is that the College Board provided a remedy for this problem, which was to notify them and have his scores cancelled, and I said this in my original post. I still the the scumbag witch deserves to be sued, and if the OP can’t find a lawyer to take the case, he ought to just go online and see how other people have drafted legal complaints and file his own. If nothing else he will draw attention to what a terrible person the woman is and make sure that she never harms any more students.
@EarlVanDorn I did try to cancel my score and retake the test on October 28th, but none of the testing centers within driving distance would take me on short notice. I didn’t want to go to my school for the original test on October 14th (had a poor proctor there previously), but the school required that all of its students take the PSAT there. I appreciate your sympathy for my situation, but I don’t think there ever was, or ever will be, a chance to make the test up. Even if I’d gotten to court and somehow received $100,000+ in damages (a very unlikely scenario), it wouldn’t be worth tarnishing my reputation in the community and raising red flags for colleges I’m applying to. I can only hope this mishap will benefit me longterm, but it doesn’t feel like it at the moment.
@ambitionsquared Well, I understand what you are saying. At the very least you should write a very strongly worded letter to the school, and make it clear that the incompetence of their proctor may well have cost you the NMSF and a huge amount of money. You should ask them to notify you in writing exactly what steps they are taking to prevent this from happening in the future. A copy of this letter should also go to the local school board.
You should also write directly to the proctor, by certified mail, return receipt, and inform her of the consequences of her irresponsible actions. Just let her know that you are reminded of consequences of her wrongful actions every single day and that you hope she will lose at least one percent of the sleep that you have lost over it.
Will all of this said, you do have to live with life as it is. You are clearly a brilliant student with lots of opportunities ahead of you. If you really can’t get this thing out of your head you probably ought to get a couple of counseling sessions to help you get your head on straight.
LOL – she won’t. Who, receiving a melodramatic letter out of the blue months after the fact, would think “Oh no I’m in the wrong” and not “This person needs help”??
Furthermore, the more I reread this, the more ridiculous it sounds. You don’t even know what the cutoff this year will be, so it’s painful to realize…what, exactly?? You won’t have a metric to measure yourself against until, like, September. Previous years’ cutoffs in California have been WAY HIGHER than even 219, so it’s not like that one extra point the first post is talking about would have made a difference in the past either. http://collegeadmissions.testmasters.com/psat-scores-cut-national-merit-2016/
It’s silly to act like this teacher ruined your chances of National Merit when a) you don’t know that in regards to the new cutoffs, and b) in past years you would have needed a substantially higher score to make the cutoffs anyway.
@bodangles The PSAT is the most important test a bright student will ever take. To have some idiot proctor screw you out of five minutes and thus adversely affect your score is reason to be angry beyond belief. This pitiful excuse for a human being does not need to proctor any future exam.
It may be months after the fact, but the scores have only been out a month. The proctor is scum.
The OP may not know what the cutoff is, but he knows that his score is lower than what it would otherwise be. He knows that it is several points below what it would have been if the witch of a proctor had not stolen what was rightfully his. It makes me mad to think about it. And he owes it to future students to write a letter to the school. It need not be melodramatic, but school officials may be too stupid to know how important the test is.
It is NOT. That test that colleges don’t actually use for admission? That test that has no bearing on post-college life and little on during-college life? That test that most people only take once and promptly put in the past? It’s more important than AP scores, which can demonstrate mastery of material and get you out of the equivalent college classes? More important than the SAT, which is what schools actually use for admission? More important than the MCAT, the LSAT, any other alphabet soup acronym that actually has anything to do with real life?
My commended 211 got me the opportunity to apply for a small 4-year scholarship from my dad’s job. It didn’t get me into any colleges. It didn’t get me any huge awards. It didn’t even guarantee me that scholarship – I got that based on GPA, SAT, essays, recs (the more important stuff). The PSAT is completely useless to anyone who’s not commended or national merit, aka THE MAJORITY of the population.
Interesting choice of gendered insults to describe someone you don’t know and have only heard of anecdotally, anonymously, over the Internet.
@bodangles I wasn’t aware that one could only take the SAT, MCAT, LSAT and so forth only once. Back when I took them they could be taken repeatedly, so a single sitting wasn’t that important. So if one only gets to take these tests once, then they are more important, but if one can sit for them repeatedly, then I stand by my assertion that the PSAT is the most important test a bright student will ever take.
National Merit Finalists get automatic full rides at a number of good colleges that are worth anywhere from $100,000 to $200,000, depending on whether or not you take advantage of free graduate school at schools like Alabama and Oklahoma.
I agree with you that the PSAT is worthless if you don’t get NMSF, but you can’t very well get it is the proctors insist that the test doesn’t matter and ruin your chances.
@bodangles The link you posted is based on the old PSAT, which is out of 240, so of course the cutoffs are higher than this year’s will be. When I tried practice tests of the old PSAT, I consistently got scores above the cutoffs in the link you posted. Of course I don’t know what the cutoff will be until September, but I know my chances aren’t great based on estimates from valid sites (like prepscholar) and even CC forums. We can debate over whether it’s my fault or my proctor’s if I don’t get NMS, but in the end it’s irrelevant whose fault it is. Like I said, the priority atm is to learn how to approach inconveniences with a better perspective.
That’s the point. Either the “I won’t make NMSF” argument is completely and totally pointless, because you have no idea about this year’s cutoffs – or you’re basing it off past years’ cutoffs, which are way higher and wouldn’t have made it anyway.
The main issue for me was the “Send the teacher a whiny letter” advice, which is not the way to approach inconveniences with a better perspective. I respect what you’re trying to do to get past it, but there’s also not much to get past until you actually know if you made it or not.
To inform someone that they have behaved in an absolutely reprehensible manner that possibly cost one hundreds of thousands of dollars is not “whiny.” It’s a duty.
It’s whiny. And weird. My response would be to refer the sender of such a letter to the nearest counseling center.
Such a letter is both ineffective and immature. Earlvandorn refers to himself as both parent and student depending on thread and since the suggestion to send such a letter isn’t made in jest as I first thought, then I’d go for adolescent wishful thinking.
Anyway : tour sat score will get you what you wanted.
And how seriously did you plan to applyvto Oklahoma and Alabama ? Be honest with yourself now.
In all likelihood the college’s you’re aiming for couldn’t care less. Focus on what’s ahead.
@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.