@PrimeNumber2 I believe you. No doubt few high schools are going to have many students score at near 1500, but I believe those high schools will not be so many in CA. Thomas Jefferson High School in VA had over 150 NMSF, but that’s an exception. Lol Only a handful of high schools in CA are going to have 40 to 50 NMSFs per year.
@websensation Boy, it would be awesome if you could collect some sample numbers from your school of how many kids got over 219 or 220. Is the ‘rumor’ that the test was hard? Were the top scoring type kids pleased with their scores? I’m sure they are all well aware of NMS, so wondering if kids are talking about cutoffs at school.
@suzyQ7
Copy pasting last comment:
Some anecdotal evidence, my school rarely gets a semifinalist (CA), but this year there were index scores of 213, 218, 219, and 225.
sounds like my 222 in CA is not so safe after all
I have another problem. I wrote I was not a citizen on the test, so can I change it to “i intend to become a citizen” now to qualify for the scholarship (we are actually planning to become citizens now)? Has anyone ever done this?
@guanlinzhou You can call the NMS people (later- when they are not so busy LOL) and tell them about your citizenship application. Likely they will need proof and I think you actually have to be in process of becoming a citizen, but ask them.
Perhaps we can get some feedback today from students / parents who are able to check in with their GC’s and learn more about what data (actual, state based/national, samples etc.) is used in the reports the GCs get from CB and also if it is considered some kind of estimated indication of percentiles or not. We’ll see how the day unfolds.
I wonder if the Home School “principals” get the same data as the traditional principals? Granted, the file would only have 1 child, but perhaps we can see that national SI % and patch it together here.
No, we don’t receive any info. Only our kids get their reports.
@PrimeNumber2 “I believe the SI cutoff for NMSF will be A LOT higher than expected. A simple reason - The PSAT questions are not as hard as CB has originally shown us. There are many tied scores north of the SI 220.”
Two problems with this theory: 1) you have no idea how many people have scores over 220. Remember that this board skews higher than normal, so when you see a “lot” of people scoring 220+, that’s not necessarily what’s happening across the country. IOW, this board isn’t inundated with people announcing scores of 150 to 170, even though there are a lot more people scoring 150 to 170 than there are scoring 210+.
- The difficulty of the questions is irrelevant. It’s a scaled score. The goal of the test is to have a certain median score with a certain standard deviation. Whether the test is harder or easier than planned, the scoring scale accounts for that.
@PrimeNumber2 where did you get the info that a lot of scores are north of 220? And where are these high scores from? Are they all over the country or concentrated in NJ, CA, NY?
I did lob in a question today to our GC dept about the reports they receive from the college board and what data in shown on them. I will let you know if I hear back and any info that is shared. Anybody else get an GC report info??
From the below list of CA NMSF list, I am guessing there are over 1,700 NM Semifinalists from CA every year. Very rough estimate. Therefore, if you are in CA and you get one of 1,700 highest SI scores, you are in. Lol
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/discussion/comment/19173991/#Comment_19173991
My thought on percentiles
This is our most recent post, including one estimate we found for state SI qualifying scores for the Class of 2017. Also we list a comparison with Class of 2016 scores using “old” system. http://publicuniversityhonors.com/2013/12/11/psat-national-merit-scholar-qualifying-scores-and-sat-equivalencies-by-state/
Question: i see that the cutoff for commended was 202 for 2016 grads. What is a best guess for this cutoff for 2017 grad?
so far some think about 207 - 210 but not clear yet of course.
Oh. That’s high. Too bad!
My kid erred by doing great on math but not so great on reading etc.
Commended is the top 50,000 kids or around 3%. Predictions are 207-210 for the minimum score for the 99th percentile, or top 1%. So, I’m guessing the commended score will be lower.