@class0f2017 Congrats on your great score! With a 1400 out of 1520 on the PSAT, you may have been in the top 3% of scorers after all. It’s the top 16,000 scorers nationwide (aggregate and filtered by home state) who are selected as National Merit Semifinalists–the “top 3%” figure that you hear is just an approximation.
What is your SI (Selection Index) score? This, along with the state in which you live, is how the cutoff is determined. To calculate your SI score, find your Individual Test scores in Reading, Writing and Language, and Math (scoring scale: 8 to 38). Then, add them up, and double the sum. This is your SI score, which ranges from 48 to 228.
“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.”
You don’t know that yet @class0f2017 --National Merit Scholarship Semifinalists for the class of 2017 will not be announced until September 2016. So there’s still hope!
@ivysource commended has already been released and its 209.
CB was not transparent when they sent home those score reports tagging people at 99% when they had the ACTUAL Psat results they could have used instead of the bogus ones. Anyway, there is already a PSAT thread where this has been discussed ad nauseum and some excellent analysis by college compass test prep company which shows the extent of CBs bogus percentiles.
Are we sure (thanks @suzyQ7) that if you didn’t get commended, then you won’t be a Semifinalist? Even in the weaker states? It all has to do with how competitive your home state is, as far as I understand. But maybe if commended is 209, that means you need to have at least 209 in all states to be eligible as a Semifinalist.
Either way, your actual SAT score means much more than your PSAT score. Get a 1500 on the new SAT, and few will care that you weren’t a National Merit Scholar.
@ivysource The lowest cutoff for NMSF is always the cutoff for commended. I think last year, commended was 202 and the cutoff for NMSF in South Dakota(lowest) was 202. Also, I would have received a letter in April for commnded status.
Still, I am very happy with my score, I just thought it was higher(was thinking 1400 new=2100 old) but then I find out it’s not even a 2000. That was a little disappointing. My score was very math heavy though which is a disadvantage for NMF but won’t matter for actual SATs.
Edit: The source you had with the 202 cutoff was for the class of 2016, which was last year.
good point @Classof2017…the cutoff is different this year. 209 for commended and to-be-determined for Semifinalist. Finalists and scholarship winners must also receive a qualifying score on the SAT.
Few National Merit semifinalists actually go on to win the scholarship. It’s more of a prestige thing for the majority of students: I believe that about 16,000 win scholarships out of the 55,000 who were initially commended.
Out of 50,000 commended, 16,000 are semifinalists and about 15,000 are finalists. I’ve read that about half of those end up getting a scholarship, whether through NM itself ($2500 one time), through colleges (sometimes combined with other scholarships up to full tuition or even full ride), or through corporations the parents work for.
I’ve known plenty of students with perfect or near-perfect PSAT scores who never won any scholarships from NMSC, simply because most (all?) of them are need-based. However, there are smaller private colleges out there who will give a full ride to any National Merit Semifinalist and/or Finalist.
If one is a finalist and wants to get a large NM scholarship, it’s really just a question of choosing to go to a college like Alabama, Arizona, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Kentucky, and a number of others. If you choose to go to an elite college, there won’t be National Merit there. (USC, the California one, has a 1/2 tuition NM award, but you have to get admitted and the rest of the cost of USC is large.)