@DoyleB Please forgive me if this has been addressed earlier in the thread, but where are you getting your 2015 Georgia statewide data from? It is my understanding that statewide data is not released (to the public) until February. Did I miss something?
Iâm an international parent and new here but read many threads about the cutoff prediction. When I saw TS% and SI% tables posted on the CB website, TS% table looks more reasonable than SI% table because I do not believe a 205 SI can be 99%. According to TS% table, 1440 is the bottom of 99+%, 1390 is the bottom of 99%, 1360 is the bottom of 98%, and so forth. It seems that as % goes down, each 1% clusters around only two or three scores. This means there are so many students who got the same TS (but SI may be quite different) below 98%, 97%, 96%,âŠâŠ As you may know, the possible SI range for each score is as follows.
Score Min Max Score Min Max
1520 228 228 1370 198 213
1510 226 227 1360 196 212
1500 224 226 1350 194 211
1490 222 225 1340 192 210
1480 220 224 1330 190 209
1470 218 223 1320 188 208
1460 216 222 1310 186 207
1450 214 221 1300 184 206
1440 212 220 1290 182 205
1430 210 219 1280 180 204
1420 208 218 1270 178 203
1410 206 217 1260 176 202
1400 204 216 1250 174 201
1390 202 215 1240 172 200
1380 200 214 1230 170 199
My prediction is based on TS% table and the assumption that students are approximately uniformly distributed within each 1%. So, all possibilities are considered like low TS but high SI and vice versa. The cumulative percentiles from my Excel spread sheet are approximately:
220 â 0.31%
217 â 0.48%
211 â 1.05%
206 â 2.05%
203 â 2.94%
200 â 3.93%
âŠ
Again, this is just my individual prediction, not any official one. Remember 220 or above is 0.31% (=.0031x 1.7m = about 5200) still a lot nationally. I guess that the cutoff for commended would be around 203-204 because .0294x1.7 million is about 50,000.
I donâ t find it odd that verbal skills are weighted more than math. Even STEM professionals do quite a bit of reading and writingâbooks, papers, talks, reports, and the all-important research/grant or funding proposals. When is the last time you used the Pythagorean theorem?
Those other subjects you dismissed like history and foreign language are far more dependent on reading and writing skills than on math skills. Even biology is more about reading and learning material with relatively little math content.
@paveyourpath I think you mention something about scholarships for ACT/certain GPA in a previous post. i am interested in this b/c my dd has a 36 ACT and a 4.0/4.8. Where did you find this information on scholarships for high performing kids? Or is it college specific. Thank you
@DoyleB â It does seem the average of the top 100 scorers is an SI of 216.6 then â and 218 was last yearâs cut off â so that certainly is skewing high as has been noted earlier in this thread and it seems unlikely there would anywhere near 100 NMSFâs from 1 school as other top schools may have somewhat similar results throughout he state. Guess the State Summary reports will be helpful to see how much scores are going up, percent of students in top ranges of each subsection and potential implications for the cut offs. In NY the mean was 968 for the Oct. 2015 test according to our GC.
Also, regarding the verbal & math weighting and changes over the years, gender differences in results etc. I came across this research piece - just sharing for those who are interested: http://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1011761.pdf
The current weighting & scoring is what it is - my son prefers the ACT in part bc of Math & Science along with reading and writing.
@addgap, you do realize that US citizenship is required?
@mathyone Youâre missing my point - I couldnât agree with you more! I didnât dismiss anything - I was trying to say exactly what you are. Perhaps I wasnât clear in my phrasing. SI weights reading and writing as 2/3 of the score; TotalScore is half math half reading/writing. Because I agree with you, I prefer the SI weighting scheme over the total score scheme.
I havenât read the CBâs rationale for weighting math at 50% for the total score, but I know that many colleges just look at CR + M (old SAT) and ignore the writing section. So I figured that CB tossed it in with reading so that colleges had to consider it. Not sure what colleges get - do they get the individual test scores? Or just total score with the subsections of ERW and Math?
As for whether the NMSC is going to consider any portion of the total score as some sort of tie-breaker - thatâs not going to happen. Itâs not even clear that NMSC gets more than the total SI for any student - where does it say they even have access to someoneâs math test score? There would be another lawsuit the second two kids are found with the same SI but different outcomes w/r/t SF status. The rules are too clear at the semi-finalist level. I agree with posters who say there is much more discretion at the finalist and scholar level to make any corrections.
@mathyone This is what I said "This is my opinion⊠I kind of agree with paveyourpath because if there is a tie, and if they donât break the tie, they may be way way over the 16,000. Itâs logical to use another criteria and the one obvious to me is TS. DoyleB said then that means they give math more weight⊠This is my thoughtâŠdo schools offer 2 english classes (reading separate from writing) and 1 math class? Or do they offer 2 classes? English covers reading and writing and math is mathâŠjust my thought.
Itâs NMSCâs money so at the end of the day, they have the final decision who they want to award scholarships to."
No one is dismissing the importance of history, science or other subjectsâŠidk why you even think that. All I was saying was that if they HAD to use a tie breaker that itâs logical they are using TS because itâs obvious. Again, this is just my opinion. But then again, maybe they will start asking people for their history, science, foreign language grades to make their decisions. WHO KNOWS?
@DoyleB , sorry I was responding to @SLparent and others who donât see any rationale for weighting verbal skills more than math.
If you consider math and science to be math-dependant and English, history, and foreign language to be language-dependent, then the high school curriculum is about 2/5 math and 3/5 verbal.
Actually, our school does offer several separate writing courses as electives. My daughter takes both English and writing.
@CA1543 I enjoyed the article you linked; thanks. I suppose one thing you could take away from the paper is that if NMSC needs a tie-breaker when too many kids have the same SI, they should just pick all the girls. I could live with that. 
@DoyleB ooohh well ok maybe in your state (if not NY) â but I have a boy - might not make the cut off in NY (he has a 218). Fingers crossed but really this is all sooo strange. And of course he missed questions in reading and aced math (but oddly on the ACT 2 weeks after the PSAT he got a 36 in reading & 35 in math - Frederick Douglass got him on the PSAT.) Good luck to your daughter!!
@mathyone My daughterâs school does offer several separate writing courses too just like your schoolâŠbut they are ELECTIVES. Idk of a school that makes MANDATORY READING course and MANDATORY WRITING courses as 2 separate courses. Now, letâs move on!
The other schools in Cobb may have a few NMSFs, but Walton might displace most of Wheelers. The other schools, like Pope, might only get one, instead of five, or none at all.
I have read the articles about trying to make the test more fair for girls. I donât see Reading and Writing as the same thing. Conceptually, the scores SHOULD be correlated. The more you read, the more you see the ârules of writingâ being addressed. However, there are many great readers with awesome comprehension skills who have never been taught the rules of writing. This is one of my BIGGEST pet peeves with our district. I am not sure if it is just our district, or the whole state of Texas, but when my kids went to study for the ACT, I had to teach them grammar. In seventh grade, they didnât even know what a preposition was, because no one had taught them. Their lack of the mechanics of English was evident when they took Spanish II and had to understand direct and indirect objects. My kids are high scorers are state and national tests. For whatever reason, the district teaches reading comprehension and vocab, but not grammar. And, because the schools are so large, they do an extremely poor job of teaching writing. The teachers would have too many papers to read. The times when my kids do write, the teachers make them do peer review, which is only as good as the kid reviewing their paper.
I know this could probably be another 100 page thread, but as a parent, you get to the point where you accept the limitations and work outside the system for your child to learn - either you teach them yourself or hire a tutor.
And yes, I now realize that there are some grammatical errors in what I just wrote, but thankfully,Iâm not being tested on it.
@micgeaux, same situation in our schools. No one seems to teach grammar anymore.
Make it three on no grammar teaching, but DS is in AP Language and is finally learning some of it.
@SuzyQ7 âNo, it is not possible that they will use Total Score as a tiebreaker in order to determine the 16K SFâs. Because, the document describing the contest clearly says the SFs are based on top SI scorers. If 2 students have the same SI, they are the same, and would both make SFâ
This was the part on the National Merit Scholarship page that led me to think differently (particularly the âtypicallyâ part: âCommended Students are named on the basis of a nationally applied Selection Index score that may vary from year to year and is typically below the level required for participants to be named Semifinalists in their respective states.â
So typically below the level required for participants but not necessarily meaning that two kids with the same SI could be treated differently. One in and one out. There was a link to an article either on this site or another about two kids with the same SI from the same school where one was NMSF and one commended. Iâm not sure if that was a hypothetical or real situation but just remember reading it and based on the âtypically below the level requiredâ as opposed to specifically stating commended falls below the state cut off makes me think itâs not as clear cut as we would all like to believe. I hope this isnât the case and the cut-offs are clearly defined cut offs by state.