My principal gave me my letter today stating that I am a Semifinalist, and I was just wondering if a 1540 on the actual SAT is good enough for a Finalist? I’m also wondering if SAT scores or Finalist decisions are also made by state, as I live in Virginia where there is usually a pretty high cut off. I’m not worried about my other academic aspects, but don’t know if it’s worth it to try the SAT again. Any help is appreciated!
1540 is definitely high enough, congratulations! The corroborating SAT score is national, and usually close to the commended cutoff (211 this year). Not clear how Finalists are determined, but if you have no Cs and not too many Bs, send your SAT scores and transcript, get a recommendation from your school and write a decent essay, you should be a NMF!
Much harder to get to semifinalist than go from semi to finalist. Your SAT is fine but if you want to get verfication from NMSC you’ll sleep easier. They compute it as an SI so just drop the 0’s, muliply EBRW by 2 and add math. Your score is so high it likely equates to an SI around the max PSAT SI of 228 so no worries. They don’t establish different SI’s for different states but an overall score usually set around the Commended cut-off, as @ollie113 has posted.
Congrats!
Based on another post from someone that spoke to NMSC. View your SAT score on college board site and note the Reading, Writing & Language, and Math scores. They are each out of max 40. So max 40+40+40=120 and multiply by 2 to get a max of 240 SI. Confirming SI will be around the lowest states cutoff 211 for 2018 (listed above). As long as you are 211 or higher you are good.