<p>D just got results of PSAT from school this afternoon - 209. Pretty sure this puts her in Commended category, but probably will not make state cut-off for NMSQT when those are set in Spring'13. </p>
<p>Not too worried - she took the PSAT a few days after returning from an intense 8 days at an international science competition so we knew jet-lag/exhaustion would be a factor. Score report indicates her score is 98th percentile for juniors.</p>
<p>Does that 98th percentile put her in a position to be considered one of the "top scholars" and do colleges tend to do anything other than fill the mailbox of those making top scholar/Commended status?</p>
<p>New to all of this, and so far CC has been a big help in getting us 'edu-ma-cated' :)</p>
<p>Kind of sad My 2 oldest sons ended up as NMF’s but my youngest son wasn’t even close on his PSAT test. I feel bad for him as it is hard to live up to his brothers, and he’ll probably end up in debt for his undergraduate degree as he won’t have the NMF scholarships his brothers have had. Oh well, I guess its time to study for the April ACT test. Good luck to everyone else. Being a National Merit Finalist has a lot of opportunities for those who choose to take advantage of them.</p>
<p>When I looked at state cut-off on NM site, she would not have made the cut-off last year, however, the GC thought she might be okay. </p>
<p>I guess my real question is whether or not being commended actually means anything to colleges. Obviously NMF is a great honor and can mean $$$. And while the NM website indicates that commended scholars may be eligible for certain scholarships from their corporate partners, I wasn’t at all clear on how that process worked.</p>
<p>*D just got results of PSAT from school this afternoon - 209. Pretty sure this puts her in Commended category, but probably will not make state cut-off for NMSQT when those are set in Spring’13. *</p>
<p>Cut offs are not known in the spring. They are known in Sept of senior year.</p>
<p>KJCF…have your son take both the SAT and ACT. He may not end up with super high schools but he may end up with high enough scores to get good merit at a good, but lesser known, school. He may just need to be more open minded. What might his major be? Schools like UA-Birmingham are quite generous to OOS students.</p>
<p>As for debt…unless you’re co-signing, he can’t borrow much…only 5500 for frosh year. Will his EFC be low with 3 in college? I would also encourage him to work over the summer and set money aside for college. He can “pay you” for his support, and you can set aside a similar amount in YOUR savings so that it won’t hurt EFC.</p>
<p>mom2 - junior son is looking at engineering right now. He has always got similar scores in his national tests like his brothers (couldn’t tell his Plan, state test scores apart) but for some reason is english/writing on his PSAT were lower than expected. My other 2 boys did much better on their ACT than SATS (35 and 36 without prep) and I am hoping S3 follows, although I will make sure he practices through Jan-April, and then schedule him to take the June ACT too. S2 loves UA and my hope is maybe S3 will get the scores to go. We only pay a specified amount for college and will take out loans above that amount with the understanding that they will pay us back. S3 might have a little larger specified amount though if we can afford more. By the time he goes to school, we will only have one other in college. We plan to look at a few WI state schools that offer engineering and are affordable, and plan to look OOS too for options. He is an A student in an engineering public school and is in the top 10% of his class, with difficult courses so I think (hope) he will be okay. Being NMF just makes everything so much easier!</p>
<p>Do you mean the Writing section? If so, many schools don’t use that for merit purposes. If his Math + CR on his SAT are strong, it won’t matter if he doesn’t do that well in the W section.</p>
<p>Your D may be closer than you think and has a good chance…
The cutoff for New Mexico the last three years has been 210 (2012), 206 (2011) and 208 (2010) per the link below. A 209 would have made NMSF 2 of those years in your state.</p>
<p>Considering that she had just returned from an international science competition tells me that your daughter may have other opportunities available. If she doesn’t make NMSF, she may get a scholarship based on her science accomplishments, or high SAT or ACT scores. There are a number of schools that literally pay for test scores. She’ll do well when looking for college money!</p>
<p>Thanks again for those replies. D is a junior, just took the SAT for the first time in December. Her first self-practice test score was 2200 with no studying so she is anxious to see her results and her goal is 2300-2400. </p>
<p>She is interested in compsci/engineering, coming from a public school with not many APs or much depth in math and science. Most, but not all, of her ECs are not tied to the school she attends, but show depth, consistency, growth and her genuine interest in her quirky interests. </p>
<p>Dad and I are divorced, my income is less than 25K, dad is around 40K so financial aid, both merit and need based will be key. Would rather assume she makes commended/does not get NMSF/NMF and start finding alternatives now than hope for making the cutoff. </p>
<p>With top tier schools so competitive for admissions, we know they are a crapshoot even for those with perfect stats. She’ll apply, she just knows there is no guarantee, so she is looking for schools that are both admission AND financial safeties or super strong matches. Any suggestions on which forum to start a thread for those kind of suggestions?</p>
<p>Thanks for all your replies. They give us much to think about.</p>
<p>Pretty similar to last year EXCEPT there were 300K+ more juniors who took the test. Data suggests score should stay the same overall but the additional test takers should tend to push up the cutoffs.</p>
<p>sorry - need to correct my post - there weren’t more students taking the psat in 2012. In past years they have used a sample of juniors to derive the percentiles. This year they used all the test takers. So the sample size grew by 300K to include all test takers. Not sure why they excluded so many test takers from the sample in the past.</p>
<p>Are you sure about that? From the link to CB,
<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.co…sqt-scores.pdf%5B/url%5D”>http://professionals.collegeboard.co…sqt-scores.pdf</a>
“More than 3.5 million students take the test each year.
Approximately 1.5 million of those students are high school
juniors (11th graders), and the remainder are students in the
tenth grade (sophomores) or younger.”
The 3.5 million number seems high. That means for every 3 Juniors taking the test, there are 4 Sophomores or younger taking it… That seems high as I always thought it was a test taken primarily by Juniors ( for NMSF) and maybe half that number or less of younger students. Yuor numbers sound more accurate than CB’s from the link.
Edit- Another possibility is that there is a huge increase in the number of foreign students taking it as 10th graders to see where they stand for testing later…</p>
My 2 oldest sons ended up as NMF’s but my youngest son wasn’t even close on his PSAT test. I feel bad for him as it is hard to live up to his brothers, and he’ll probably end up in debt for his undergraduate degree as he won’t have the NMF scholarships his brothers have had. Oh well, I guess its time to study for the April ACT test. Good luck to everyone else. Being a National Merit Finalist has a lot of opportunities for those who choose to take advantage of them.</p>