I agree. I don’t understand why the SF news comes so late. Why wait till fall?
@DoyleB Let’s say your logic is true. Can you explain why the user and national percentiles for total score wouldn’t have more differences at the top? For example 99+ is 1430 for national and 1440 for users. So, if you are a 1440 user (someone who would actually take the test) and you are still in the 99+ for the national percentiles (the phantom test takers).
@profdad2021…Exactly!!! The students need time to gather information on schools and scholarships to make an informed decision. My son is looking at schools in Texas because of the Valedictorian scholarship however if he gets NM finalists then everything changes. It makes having a plan hard. Plus when filing out the scholarship application you have to put a 1st pick school…how do you know until you have all the information? I am such a planner and am having a hard time with this.
@Tgirlfriend I would venture to say 221 is a really good score for TX as it’s been running around 218-220 for the last 3 years based on 240…that’s just my guess.
You said the next person behind your son’s score is 202… Did he ask a lot of high score test takers at his school? What is a typical number NMSF’s does your son’s school have?
@micgeaux I’ve thought about that, because I agree that there’s not a dramatic difference at the high end between national and user percentiles in the total score number. Here’s my thoughts - if you double the number of people in the distribution and the percentiles don’t change, then those newly added people were distributed in exactly the same manner as the people who did take the test. Think about what that means. Last year there were roughly 16,000 NMSF. That logic says that somewhere out in the US, there were 16,000 other students whose scores would have been just as high as students who became NMSF, but those other students didn’t bother to take the test. I think this is very very unlikely. Becoming a NMSF is a big deal, and I believe the vast majority of students capable of doing so take the test. So I’m somewhat skeptical of the differences between user and national at the high end.
I learned a little info today - per report to GCs, the National mean score for juniors was 1010 & for NY it was 968. Don’t know exactly how that compares to last year or really tells us about shifts in scores - thoughts?
If I read the tables right the national mean of 1010 on the 2015 test concords to 140 & per the 2014 report a 140 was the 49%ile. The national mean in the 2014 report was 141.9 so the means seems to have gone down a little. Not sure what if anything we can estimate based on this though.
OK @DoyleB I understand. I was hoping you could provide an explanation that might give me some comfort with the 99+. I’ll give you a brief example, so we are on the same page. 1440 is in 99+ and 1430 is not. If we take the midpoint of the range of SIs associated with these total scores, you would get 1440 = midpoint of 216; so 216 would be the last 99+. 1430 is the first 99th percentile; its midpoint is 214 ; so 214 is the first 99th percentile. (I know 215 has to go somewhere.)
This may be a faulty way to look at it.
I mean 1430 is a 99+ under national but not user. 1440 is the last 99+ under both.
@SLparent …Yes, when the kids got the scores back they all started comparing the scores. There seem to be a lot of scores in the 175 to 195 range. I know we had a student get commended a few years ago. I don’t know anymore than that though. I am sure there has been more just not in the last few years.
@CA1543…what do you think that means? Is that what they are calling the average score? Or they think the average score will be?
For what it’s worth, and it’s probably not much, don’t drive yourselves crazy. You’re just not going to know until September and everything you see before that, unless it comes from College Board, is just a guess. I went though this two years ago with my daughter who ended up being finalist and spent way too much time fretting about something over which I had no control. I hope my son makes it this year but I’m going to try not to drive myself crazy this time.
@Tgirlfriend – “Mean” = the average. But honestly I can’t say for sure what CB is actually putting on reports to the GC’s - I certainly hope it is based upon actual PSAT 2015 test-takers. Can a few others pursue their GCs this week - the reports are available from the CB and CB has done several webinars so they should be possible to get. thanks so much!
@Plotinus, no time for 42 new messages just now, but wanted to say thanks for your post about the math way back when. Good to know, as I’ve been telling my SAT tutoring students that if it’s on the non-calculator section, the arithmetic should be “easy”. (Easy of course being relative) But based on the 4 sample tests, that seems to be the case.
@thshadow, sorry that twitter link only showed the question and not the answer - but someone else posted the CB answer.
I think when the Commended number is revealed in April, we will have a better idea of cutoffs. If commended is around 210 as testmaster predicts, then their cutoffs are likely to be in the ballpark. If commended is around 200, then the work you did previously on -10, -8, -4, -2 could be correct.
I’m hoping CB’s research study produced reasonable results.
I finally received an email message from CB about their SI % tables (research vs actual - separate issue from CB twitter account). The person answering the message obviously didn’t know the answer and said it was being forwarded to their Escalations Department.
If I can get a back and forth going with the Escalations Department, I’ll try to find out if another release of the 2015 Guide is expected - using actual test results instead of research data. Gut instinct, says no more releases though.
You know things are bad at the College Board when they have to escalate a simple question about their data. LOL.
And takes a week for a response:
"We received your request in regard to #. We will be happy to assist you and we apologize for any inconvenience you may have experienced.
Your request has been forwarded to our Escalations Department for processing. Please allow 5-7 business days for contact."
So if I understand @Speedy2019, college board is escalating a response to the same question answered on twitter?
Odds that the answer will be different?
@Dave_N, right. I didn’t ask on twitter. Someone else did. I saw the question & answer and posted here.
As for me, I asked the question via email.
Odds? Probably greater than 0.