National Merit Cutoff Predictions Class of 2017

@mathyone From my perspective a more interesting question is if that 20% would have made NM w/o the tutoring service. How would they have fared via self-studying with prep books? Obviously a rhetorical question.

That is obviously wrong because the the exams are on different scales. The kids scoring 1500+ could easily score 1600 if they took the SAT today.

“How would they have faired via self-studying with prep books?”

Isn’t everyone supposed to be using Khan Academy?

@plotinus That matches my dd’s experience with 2 released tests and her PSAT score. All scores were within the same range.

Lol! My dd found Khan annoying. I think their prep lasted all of 30 mins. Doesn’t keep them from asking for donations, though.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek
By “2 released tests”, do you mean 2 of the 4 official redesigned practice tests? There are no real released tests for the redesigned SAT.
How big were the differences? There is usually some difference between tests taken at home and real tests taken in a testing center because of the additional stress and distractions.

“The kids scoring 1500+ could easily score 1600 if they too the SAT today.”
No one has seen a real redesigned SAT yet, so I would not count my chickens.

The real PSAT’s are harder than the official practice PSAT, in my opinion. I expect the same for the real SAT. CB is going to throw in some zingers to limit the number of perfect papers.

Yes, I mean 2 of the 4. Within 20 pts. Her scores on the 2 tests, the practice PSAT, and her PSAT scores were all very close.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek That shows she’s a good test-taker.

@plotinus Actually she isn’t. She just finds the new format meshes well with her pacing and abilities. She didn’t find the reading at all challenging and didn’t feel rushed like she normally does on standardized tests.

@Mom2aphysicsgeek
DId she take the Oct. 14 or 28? I think the Oct. 14 one was better for the really strong in reading, a little weaker in math people because the reading was harder and the math was easier. Of course the curve is supposed to make everything the same, but sometimes it doesn’t quite do that.

@DoyleB I could not agree more. I found it odd when the number of test takers was not listed on the Understanding Scores Report as it had been in years past. So, from what I can gather, it turns out the SI percentile was based on a sample of about 80K. Why base it on a sample of prior test takers when you are in possession of the data for all of the test takers for the current test? They weren’t tasked with redesigning the wheel, just have a computer tally up all of the scores and assign percentiles. Good Will Hunting wasn’t needed for that math. SMH

@plotinus my D3 took the practice PSAT the weekend before the Oct. 14 exam and scored a 1410. She scored a 1470 on the real thing.

Her practice SAT’s (tests 1 and 2) were 1480 and 1520, respectively. She said the practice SAT’s were actually easier than the practice PSAT! She took them in Aug. and Sept, before taking the practice PSAT. She was timed to the minute on all of them, although obviously you can’t replicate test conditions perfectly during these test runs.

Just one data point, FWIW.

As to the CB’s statement of "your PSAT score is what you’d get on the SAT today . . . " probably applies to the average test taker more than the upper tails. The thinking behind their statement is that while the SAT has a higher scale, there are a few harder questions that presumably the test taker would miss. Obviously the top scoring kids are going to get some to all of those harder questions correct as well.

@Plotinus That’s not exactly true though is it? The 80 of former PSAT correlated to the 800 on the SAT. New PSAT is on a scale up to 760 for an SAT section of 800 (1520 vs 1600).

@Plotinus I understand what you’re saying. I can’t get my head around it either. CB needs concordance between the old SAT and the new SAT, so admissions people, GCs, etc. can compare new numbers to old numbers, and vice versa. So CB does sampling, gives the PSAT, then gives 2 sessions of the new SAT. At that point they have enough data to generate concordance tables. Also, they won’t give out scores from the March SAT until after the May SAT has been administered. That way then can generate the scoring tables for both SAT tests to make all the numbers come out the way they want them to. So they will have data in the June timeframe that can score March and May test takers, and generate tables.

But the PSAT has already been scored. The scoring tables for that test can’t be changed. At least, it doesn’t seem like they can. I guess in June they could say “Well, we told you your PSAT score was a 1450 with SI of 218. But now that we have more data, you really got a 1390, and SI of 212”. But that seems unlikely.

So for the PSAT they’ve generated scoring and SI tables based on sample data, and those tables don’t match the actual results of the PSAT. The distribution of the scores doesn’t match what was expected based on the sample group. They may not match the results of the upcoming SAT either. They can fix all of that for the new SAT, but I still don’t see how they can retroactively fix the PSAT mess they’ve created.

@Plotinus I think the CB is in way over their head! I feel bad for kids who plan to take the Mar test because they don’t know how they scored before the May test is administered
so what do they do? Take it again in May because they don’t know how they did previously just to be sure? Maybe more students will be taking the ACT after all.

My son will take the ACT in Feb. And the SAT in March
 Once the March results are in, he will register for the June SAT, if needed.

There are a lot of variables in any individual test sitting. Just becoming more familiar with the exam format can improve performance. This is why CB uses a very large test population and a special equating section to measure the relative difficulty of tests.

“'your PSAT score is what you’d get on the SAT today . . . ’ probably applies to the average test taker more than the upper tails”

I agree some people are going to score 800, 790, 780, and 770 on the SAT sections, so there will be some stretching out of the curve at the top. I don’t think everyone is going to move up 40 points. The idea is that the SAT will have 40 points worth of additional hard questions that were not on the PSAT. The SAT is also longer, so there is room for these questions. If a student can do these questions, he or she will move up.

“The 80 of former PSAT correlated to the 800 on the SAT.”

No, the 80 of the former PSAT did not correlate to the 800 of the former SAT. CB did not establish a PSAT-SAT correlation for the old test (although I could do a back of napkin conversion as SAT=10PSAT +30 so 80 PSAT=770 SAT.)

The direct correlation between PSAT and SAT scores is a new thing for the redesigned test. This means that the percentiles of the same scores have to line up. The stretching out at the top is not going to influence the alignment much if are are talking about stretching out the top 1% or 1.5% or so.

I’ve been compiling some scores for the last few days
 It’s not a perfect list
 Idk how to make it look pretty like an excel file on here but it’ll give you a feel (I guess). I’m sure I have some typos and made some minor errors too. Some gave TS but no SI’s, some gave SI’s but no state (at the end). You’ll see multiple names, that’s because they reported their kids’ friends scores or they have twins :):).

chewy7083 217 AL

arizona 223 1500 AZ
tanyat23 223 1490 AZ
mom3eps 216 AZ
phoenixmomof2 212 AZ

srk2017 228 CA
nightlark 226 1510 CA
sdhotmama 226 CA
worryhurry411 226 CA
hidude45454 225 CA
calmomofcats 224 CA
lovethebard 224 CA
stresstasticlife 222 CA
appgodxoxo 221 1470 CA
masond123 220 CA
LAD2266 220 CA
srk2017 220 CA
srk2017 220 CA
srk2017 220 CA
srk2017 220 CA
srk2017 220 CA
srk2017 220 1480 CA
alexcheng10 219 CA
leafseadragon 219 1460 CA
fisik 218 CA
ambitionsquared 217 CA
dsl411 217 CA
hcmom65 217 CA
juicymango 217 CA
livingproof 217 CA
bdragon 216 CA
confusedhs213 215 CA
tikopiarock28 212 CA
chrispychop 210 CA
mangomadness 206 CA

ctstrider 225 CT
cglynn 223 CT
chilkitty 223 1490 CT
theamazing77 213 1440 CT
blue1artic 203 1380 CT

aptrail 225 DC
candjsdad 1490 DC

tableforsix 225 FL
doraemon33004 223 1490 FL
mitrak 222 FL
samgallahan 218 1460 FL
2blessed2b 216 1430 FL
delilahhxc 216 FL
long2181998 216 FL
canadant 215 FL
calchong 212 FL

stingray2000 225 GA
childishambino 218 GA
raiderdore 218 GA
yakisoba 216 1450 GA
gabaseballmom 212 GA

futuremmachamp 218 IA
kyrieirving2 211 1380 IA
franklin20 207 IA

jake071999 224 1500 IL
asianfang 222 IL
ivysaurusrex 222 IL
dotexe 218 IL
WGSK88 218 IL
ican’tsleep 214 IL
destin4harvard 210 IL
jcdeiskating 210 IL

kikidee9 216 IN

jjutgen15 211 1420 KS
datahead 1480 KS

dwilliam 217 1460 KY
vandyalum93 214 KY

sportsman88 215 LA

mlp139 228 MA
bluekou23 222 1480 MA
walnuthill 222 1480 MA
tarantiny 221 1470 MA
tigraci 221 MA
flyingoat 220 MA
massmom 220 MA
eminem99 200 MA

ackack 222 MD
burstlimit 222 MD
aron 217 1450 MD
clarebeatrice 206 MD
greeneggsandsam9 206 MD

fun1234 222 ME

celica 223 MI
marccoreusi 208 1400 MI
profdad2021 204 1380 MI

mamelot(for friend) 226 MN
mamelot 220 MN
laikadoodles 218 1470 MN
mraustere 215 1440 MN

boglebuff 217 1440 MO
kcedition 211 MO
123field 210 MO

earlvandorn 211 1410 MS
earlvandorn (for son’s friend) 207 MS

racmpc 220 1450 NC
disshar 218 NC
payn4ward 199 NC

ananmatisse 209 1390 ND

drewhamahill 208 NE

suzyq7 221 1480 New England Boarding school

crusoemon 1440 NH

shiryc 224 NJ
fambrughini 221 NJ
chembiodad 219 NJ
cbow17 212 NJ
ro2400 211 NJ
realtwinkie 208 NJ

rustroll 217 NV

trig2017 221 NY
CA1543 218 1470 NY
mcw2017 215 NY
liibigidiot 213 1430 NY
zaarp 213 NY
starjoy8 195 1260 NY
mdcmom 194 NY

aaronuhs 225 OH
flashk 223 1490 OH
enforece88 220 1470 OH
garyasho2 220 1480 OH
milfordeagles 219 1470 OH
sberry26 218 1440 OH
ohiodad51 213 OH

evan99 213 OK

studious99 222 OR
danc3rmrm 218 OR

kjflhd 228 PA
engineur 215 PA
classof2017 206 PA

gghteah 204 RI

irishtwins 206 1340 SC

dakotadelsuf13 206 SD

likestowrite 222 TN
smilingalong 220 TN
higheredrocks 215 TN
isalck32 211 TN
mkumar17 210 1420 TN

curlypie99 ? 1490 TX
maksbow 227 TX
cardinalcyn 223 TX
sb2017 223 TX
micgeaux 221 TX
tgirlfriend 221 TX
itsgettingreal2017 219 1470 TX
sammieb 216 TX
sciencenerd2017 216 1440 TX
micgeaux 215 1440 TX
eljefe123 214 TX
ross 213 1420 TX
ctaylors6 212 TX
slparent 212 1430 TX
svoll123 211 TX
tayemach 197 TX

novadad99 221 VA
thinmints 220 1470 VA
jrkick64 215 VA

picuberoot 222 1490 WV
oechols 201 1300 WV

footsondaughter 225

ketchup 223 1480

mnpapa29 222

merething 221

mtrosemom 219

mtrosemom 218

mathyone 211 1420

joewellen 210 1430

phudou193 210 1370

pannaga 209

pannaga 208

js1029 198

hopeforthebest 1200

knowledgeless 218

stlmo62 213

eragon314 226

timenchanter 220

chew7083 217

wvuhopeful 216

nwmom2boys 210

sincerelove 224

cgsarat71 218 1470

ananyadoodles 220

amyandscott 211

mphiltx 189

collegefreak 225

pnwfam 214

lovesmath 226

szgardengirl 200

jjundy 221

nillupa 192

buffalo 203

223 1490 (NC)