<p>My child was unable to take the PSAT last fall, and has followed the NM standard procedure of taking a spring SAT and submitting it and other school data in substitution. Child took March 2005 SAT, and scored at 21xx--a good score, especially for this child who tests erratically. Child thinks they are high enough for her purposes and does not want to retake in the fall, contingent on SAT II scores, APs and grades being very high at the end of this year. This post is not about that decison, though, which hasn't been made yet. (I think she will decide to take the SAT again in the fall, but we will see. Probably most people who know her think she could increase her scores somewhat.)</p>
<p>I called NM today to check on the status of the substitute score submission. NM informs me that what they do in these situations is take the SAT score, drop the last digit, and use the result as the index number for determining status. In other words, if the student's SAT score was 2050, the index score for national merit selection is 205.</p>
<p>My child's score is well above the national cutoff this coming senior year for Commended--202. So minimally she will be a commended student. State index scores for the current crop of students are not yet public and will not be released until next fall--schools will get the info a bit earlier, in August. My child's index score is ONE point higher than the state index score for this year's seniors in our state. The index score has been rising in my state, not dramatically, but steadily. The NM office suggested that my child retake the SATs in June, the last date acceptable to NM, to see if her score would go up--June SAT score would still count for National Merit purposes.</p>
<p>What to do? The child is scheduled already to take SAT IIs in June. She has finals the week before the June SAT date; unlikely she could get much prep time in. She would still have to take SAT IIs in the fall, and possibly the SATs again--third time in less than a year. Potentially she could have three test sittings in the fall--SAT in October, SATII in November, and foreign language SAT II in December (her language is only given once a year).</p>
<p>If she did qualify for NM it is unlikely she would get a great deal of money out of it--her sibs who are in college both were finalists and collected only the small stipends. The schools she seems interested in right now don't provide large NM awards. On the other hand, it is a nice honor, and sometimes is worth substantial money.</p>
<p>Does anyone have a sense whether PSAT scores went down or up this last fall? Any sense of whether index scores are continuing to go up? I sort of remember that there were changes to the PSAT to parallel the SAT changes, which might result in lower scores--but perhaps this is wishful thinking on my part.</p>
<p>Am I missing something here? There must be some way of finessing this.</p>
<p>TIA.</p>