Alright, I know a bunch of you ACT fanatics will be quick to dismiss the new SAT (or any sat…) but just curious, what are the major differences between the new and old and who will this help (People good at english or math or…)? Do you think that I should wait to take it until the second testing date or will I be fine with the first?
Based on these scores:
PSAT: 1440
PLAN: 32
is taking the ACT or SAT better for me?
It’s been discussed a lot. Search around.
The consensus among those “in the know” is that while the ACT used to be easier than the SAT, it is now the other way around thanks to the new SAT. Expect scores on the new SAT to be higher, percentile-wise, than similar scores from previous years due to a creative scaling up of scores by the College Board, as evidenced by the October 2015 PSAT. How is the Board doing so? By creating a “Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” that includes students who did not take the SAT, thus making SAT percentiles more directly comparable to ACT Percentiles. This is how the top 3% of students on the most recent PSAT ended up scoring 99%, which of course seems like a mathematical impossibility until you realize that the numbers are being intentionally fudged.
What is the source of your assertion that the top 3% of students on the most recent PSAT ended up scoring 99%?
@ivysource Since SAT is a scaled score, doesn’t it mean that even if it’s gotten easier there will be no difference on the scaled score? It’s all relative isn’t it.
@FlyingAnon Yes, the SAT is a scaled score…but the percentile score is now scaled relative to all test takers in that grade, not just the test-takers who actually choose to take the SAT. The actual number score (400-1600) shouldn’t be inflated, but the percentile will.
That being said, I do expect the curve on the SAT to be a bit easier than usual this year (and the curve on the ACT to be a bit harder) due to the fact that many cautious, high-scoring students are avoiding the SAT this year (and opting for the ACT instead) due to uncertainty surrounding new SAT and its scoring. The scaling of a standardized test such as the SAT or ACT is a direct reflection of the body of students taking the test that year.
@GMTplus7 I can assert this from professional experience. I see PSAT and SAT scores all the time. The numbers are anecdotal, but I am confident in them.
Here are some examples: A score of 1170 on the PSAT (typically around 75%) is 87% on this year’s test, and a score of 1360 (typically around 94%) is 98% on this year’s PSAT.
I understand that part of this effect is that the new PSAT is capped at 1520 points…but it’s still too large of a percentile difference to be anything other than an intentional adjustment on the College Board’s part. In the Board’s defense, it has admitted as such:
"The Nationally Representative Sample percentile shows how your score compares to the scores of all U.S. students in a particular grade, including those who don’t typically take the test.
The User Percentile — Nation shows how your score compares to the scores of only some U.S. students in a particular grade, a group limited to students who typically take the test."
We will know for sure when the March 2016 SAT scores are released this month.
The official PSAT score report shows both percentiles - the national one and the one relative to the other test takers. So just use the one relative to the other test takers.That’s the one that matters. Not sure why @ivysource is making a big deal about this.
If you look at the raw score distribution in the PSAT report from the collegeboard, the percentiles will make more sense.
@mathprof63 You need to read the fine print on the User Percentile…it says that it compares “the scores of only some U.S. students in a particular grade … students who typically take the test.” Not the same as all students who actually take the test.
Also, as far as I can tell, the College Board is putting a much stronger emphasis on the “Nationally Representative Sample Percentile” than on “The User Percentile – Nation.” For example, the PDF versions of PSAT score reports do not mention the user percentile whatsoever, although the detailed online score reports do. The User Percentile is normally a few percentage points below the NRSP, depending on where you scored.
take both
Please note that I’m not necessarily criticizing the College Board for tinkering with the percentiles, sneakily worded as it may have been. The College Board did what it had to do to deal with a formidable competitor (the ACT) who had become the dominant test because the SAT had the reputation as the harder exam.
We just have to be aware that SAT percentiles are now being inflated to make them more comparable to ACT percentiles, which means that colleges will be paying closer attention to the actual scaled scores (400-1600).
In other words, a student with a 1550 who scores 99% would be significantly more impressive than a student with a 1450 who also scores 99%.
@GMTplus7 @ivysource
This year’s NMS Commend cut off is SI 209 as announced by NMSC in April.
209 is where 97% lies based on ~50,000 students out of ~1.6 mil junior PSAT takers.
Page 11 of “Understanding Scores 2015” Document lists
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/2015-psat-nmsqt-understanding-scores.pdf
SI 209 in 99%.
Even SI 205 is listed as 99%.
The %iles in the students’ score reports were inflated by at least 2% in that score range.
A world where a 1360 and a perfect 1520 are both 99% is a strange world indeed.
Yep I had a 1400 PSAT and it told me that was a 99th percentile, but apparently its not even top 3% since I didn’t get commended. I’m guessing its about a 96th percentile. The thing that sucks is that last year my percentile score during sophomore year was like an 80th percentile so I did much better without studying much at all, but because I initially thought I had a 99th percentile, its a little disappointing to find out I didn’t even get commended. This new change will lead to a lot of disappointment as people get happy seeing their score on the new SAT, until they convert and find out it is 50-100 points lower than they thought it was.
If a test is hard enough, that could easily happen. In my college math & chemistry tests, the tests were really hard such that getting ~half the answers right was the median score. There were few students who could get the last few questions right, so there was a long tail at the upper end of the distribution.
But I dont think that’s the case fof the Oct2015 PSAT. The percentile ranks are just wrong. The CB already stated when they released the initial PSAT concordance tables that those tables were prelim and not based on an actual test sitting and that it would release a revised table in May. Dunno how one can conclude this constitutes a marketing conspiracy vs simply having a nonrepresentive sample set of experimental testers prior to the real sitting.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar…
A 1400 can yield many different combinations of SI, so your PSAT score percentile may not be the same as your SI percentile.
The PSAT gives 50:50 weighting to the math and verbal sections. For SI, the weighting is 2/3 verbal, 1/3 math.
@GMTplus7 That is true, and my PSAT is math heavy. If my CR/W and M scores were switched, I would have easily gotten NM Commended and maybe even NMSF. Does that mean the 99th percentile is still accurate for my overall score, just not my SI? Some people on other threads have said Collegeboard “messed up” the percentiles by not using the actual PSAT testing sample to make the percentile, instead predetermining it using previous data.
The PSAT percentile ranks are not wrong; they are just no longer actual percentiles of PSAT test-takers. And it’s not a conspiracy because the College Board is being transparent about it, at least for those who are willing to pay close attention.
I understand that those percentiles are technically possible, given a very difficult test. But there is no way that a student with a 1360 on the PSAT could have possibly done better than 99% of test-takers. A 1360 is normally 94%, and the new SAT only got easier in comparison to the old one.