<p>Your parents are totally unreasonable - its a practise test for the SATs. Not to be nasty, perhaps you should ask them how they did when they took these tests.</p>
<p>Something tells me that the parents didn’t take the PSAT’s, and I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest that they are from another culture, hence the reaction.</p>
<p>Ouch…just got my son’s back and they’re not super impressive, but I think back to my SAT’s and they were terrible! He did better than I did so he gets kudos for that. I hope your parents calm down. You sound like a good kid. Keep up the good work!</p>
<p>Well, it’s your parents’ fault.</p>
<p>They’re the one who chose what state you live in, right?</p>
<p>If they had chosen a state with a lower cutoff, you would have been a semifinalist, right?</p>
<p>Nail your SATs and the PSAT won’t matter much at all. My D probably just missed the NMSF cut-off this year, too, after doing a terrific PSAT practice run as a sophomore that would have gotten her Semifinalist if that score counted. She was very upset because she had worked really hard to improve her Math score which was a little below the CR and W on last year’s test. Well, she improved the math significantly, but dropped enough in CR and W to end up with a composite score a few points lower than last year’s. Probably too much focus on the math, not enough on CR and W in the test prep phase, possibly coupled with overconfidence since she’d done so well on those sections last year. </p>
<p>I wasn’t angry. I ended up being the one consoling her. She still got a really good score, and the fact that she’s done it twice now indicates she’s capable of scoring really well on the SAT. In fact, if you “superscore” her best PSAT CR, W, and M scores, the number is stratospheric; that gives her a high target to aim for on the SAT. National Merit Finalist gets you automatic scholarships at some schools, but we haven’t been able to identify any schools in that group that D is actually interested in attending. Beyond that, it doesn’t get you anything but bragging rights; the SAT matters a whole lot more in admissions. There’s still lots of merit money not tied to National Merit/PSAT at other schools, and D’s “financial safety” is now likely to be a school that she has some real interest in. But where she ends up depends on her continuing to do well in school and nailing the SATs and/or ACTs. She knows that. She’s focused. She’s had a wake-up call. And we’re happy.</p>
<p>My son missed the cut off last year. But the deal I made with him was for effort not for results. He couldn’t control what the score actually was, but he could control how he prepared. I do care about the Scholarship money, my employer offers a NM scholarship- and the interesting thing is that he just got the application anyway last week - that they are opening it up to commended because they didn’t get enough semifinalists.</p>
<p>Tell your parents that my son missed the NMSF cut-off by 1 point 3 years ago. He went on to score 2340 on the SAT and is now a junior at Dartmouth. IMHO, they are way out of line and should be congratulating you.</p>
<p>Good Luck.</p>