<p>Does the NMSC superscore SAT's taken by someone to determine finalist status or do they only take single sittings?</p>
<p>They will only accept the scores from your junior PSAT, that's what they base it on.</p>
<p>simpson98, i think the question is in reference to the whole SATs-have-to-match-PSATs requirement. anyway, i'm almost positive they look at the superscore.</p>
<p>Well the OP said "to determine finalist status", and the answer is that they do not superscore your SAT's and PSAT's to determine one's finalist status, I'm pretty certain they only take the results of that one sitting.</p>
<p>For instance, my junior PSAT score was a 205, and the cut-off for semi-finalists in my state was around a 210, so I only received the title of Nat'l Merit Commended. Now, if you superscore my PSAT's and SAT's I'd have 214, which would have placed me as a semi-finalist. That didn't happen, so I'm fairly sure that they determine your status based only on that those scores.</p>
<p>You can't superscore PSAT cause you only take it once. I'm praying they superscore SAT though :-)</p>
<p>Well, a lot of kids, like myself, took the PSAT's once sophomore year and once junior year, so I wasn't quite sure. What do you mean about SAT's though? Only the PSAT's play into the NMSF determination, if that's what you mean. When you take the test it's called "PSAT/NMSF test", the SAT's and the NMSF aren't linked.</p>
<p>SAT score verifies your PSAT score, that's all.</p>
<p>I think there's been some confusion. I'm already a National Merit Semi-finalist and I'm wondering whether different SAT scores I have can be superscored so that I can be a Finalist. Sorry about not clarifying.</p>
<p>They look at each individual section to make sure each is at least in the same range if not better than your PSAT scores. They don't actually care about your out of 2400 score because they say they look at your math score, cr score, and only the mc raw score of your writing. So I'm sure if they don't actually care about the total score they just want to see if your best math, best cr, and best mc off the writing were at least as good as the respective PSAT sections.</p>
<p>Superscore. =] Your SAT scores just need to show that your PSAT score wasn't a fluke.</p>
<p>Your SAT scores are fine. You do not need to take the SAT again. The 2 previous posters are correct.</p>
<p>Most people make it to finalist and the ones that don't it's because either they didn't fill out the forms or maybe disciplinary problems. However, all finalists do not become Scholars. Becoming a Scholar is not a requisite to get money from the school you'll be attending. If you get the $2500 award from NM you can take it anywhere, but many (if not all) schools will deduct it from what they were going to award you (amazing, isn't it?). S got $4k ($1k/year) from his school. If he had gotten the $2.5k from NM, then the award would have been $375/year to complete the $4k). Understand that Merit and financial aid are related but not the same, each school has its own rules, and not all schools participate in the program.</p>
<p>how it is decided which finalists get an award. The fact that they are given the designation "Scholar" implies that those people are the cream of the crop. Is that true?</p>
<p>They are all the cream of the crop. There is limited amount of money to give out. You can get only one award for National Merit. If the score meant anything, there were none higher than his. In our case since the school S went to, did participate in the program and he was getting $4k from them (if he had qualified for FA it would have been $8k), we would like to think that the money went to someone that was going to a non participating school instead. At one time you will have to decide which is your first choice school (he did get substantially more merit money from the school besides the NM).</p>