National Merit Cutoff and the PSAT

<p>Hey!</p>

<p>Our school gave us back our PSAT scores and I was wandering if people forsee the state cutoffs rising for the semifinalist cutoff scores. The reason I am asking this is because of the fact that the test that saturday PSAT seemed almost "easier" than normal and I do not know if this will equate to higher state cutoff scores. I live in NE (which had a cut off of 206 last year) and got a 209 on the PSAT, so is it likely that the cutoff may raise beyond this score. Sorry of this is a dumb or unanswerable question, but I just wanted to see what ppl on CC thought about it.</p>

<p>THANKS for your time!
Robbie</p>

<p>Don't worry, it's not a dumb question. From what I know about year to year trends, it is definitely possible that the cut off score could rise (or drop) three points. I know there are threads somewhere on here if you search for them that include previous year's cutoffs, so you can see what's happened in your state. I have NO idea what the tests were like this year though, so I'm not sure if the cutoffs will change a bunch. But it's possible!</p>

<p>EDIT: Here's a link to a list of the cutoff scores for a few random years up to 07, and if you search around you can find last year's pretty easily too. </p>

<p><a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2993607-post662.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/2993607-post662.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>It's possible to figure out if it rose or dropped by seeing what scores %tiles correspond with. For instance, if 99% last year = minimum score of 210, while this year, 99% = minimum score of 208, we'd know it actually dropped.</p>

<p>Soo does anyone have the percentile ranges for this PSAT? I can't find it on the forums...but does anyone have it?</p>

<p>It's very very unlikely that the cutoff would rise 4 points in one year. It's happened, but it's unlikely. More likely would be a jump of 1-3 points, in which case you'd be safe.</p>