interesting. I don’t even know how they get registered for it. At our school they all just take it. If they register it’s like the week before.
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I know in our case it’s taken care of by the registrar.
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I hope that’s not true. My daughter has not received that email but she is registered for the PSAT already.
What is everyone’s strategy for testing with the new digital test coming out this spring? My son did all right on the SAT last year, he got a 1300 as a sophomore with no prep. Should he take the PSAT offered at school in October? I mean it can’t hurt because it’s free and offered during school, right. And then the SAT again sometime in the fall since he seemed to do well with the format? I feel like spring is going to be a total crap shoot with the digital test.
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Our strategy - prep and take it twice in the fall. And hope be done. There is very little need to take it more than twice if you put your best effort in those two.
Better the devil you know. And if that fails, the digital SAT is available in the Spring - which, like my older kids, would be March (spring break) and June (after APs).
Our strategy is that S25 took the paper test last Saturday, will take the PSAT in October at school and maybe try the computer based SAT in the spring just to see.
D23 applied to 13 schools test-optional and was accepted and awarded merit at all of them. So I’m not super concerned about test scores.
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D25 is taking the digital PSAT in October. I think she may wait for the digital SAT in the stormy because it is shorter. Unless her practice ACT scores are much higher.
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The October PSAT is the NMSQT, so I figure it’s worth it for every kid to take it just for the crapshoot of lucking into one of the top slots (if they have a good testing day, and the state is either not as competitive, or other kids have a bad testing day).
My other kids had completely non-competitive SATscores. But my ‘25 kid seems to test well. What exactly does the NMSQT get you?
Our plan is to have her take it once with current format and possibly once next spring with new format depending on how she does on the PSAT in October.
You most definitely should take the PSAT in October as that is the only test you can take to qualify for national merit. Only the October junior year counts.
Depending on the college it could give you up to a full ride scholarship!
It’s the National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test – so, it can put you in line to get a scholarship (some colleges offer a full ride).
My son’s school has a PSAT class - it’s really just AP English plus they spend time in the summer and before the PSAT helping the kids prep with tutorials. Then they turn around and take the SAT the very next week, getting a two for one on the preparation.
If he did well enough in October he won’t necessarily take it in the spring, but we’re planning on that anyway.
Yes, he’s planning on doing biology research. Probably going through PhD track.
I wonder how that will work this year as the PSAT will be pretty different than the SAT. For example, they can use calculators for all of the digital math and the English sections are a lot shorter for the digital.
I didn’t know that about the calculators. Interesting!
My son tells me that Khan academy will tell you the differences between sat and psat questions but it’s similar enough that it will prepare you for both. He said he noticed some questions on the sat math section that did not appear on the psat (geometry) but they were very similar. Also I just think having them close together can only help.
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Generally speaking kids should just prep for the SAT, it will cover anything they need to know for the PSAT, and kids who targeted the Aug and Oct SATs have the advantage.
My kids tell me that they don’t actually need the calculator for the calculator questions, so allowing it or not probably doesn’t change the questions much.
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One benefit of the digital this year is that there are so few questions approved by college board that they repeat a lot. The international students that took the digital last spring had a lot of overlap (like some of the exact same math questions) from March to May.
It’s probably a good idea to download the bluebook app (by college board) and take at least 1 practice PSAT just to get familiar with the different functions and features.
I have also read that actual vocabulary is a bigger part of the digital test.