<p>S took PSAT test at another school that offers it on Weds. Didn’t know about the scoring advantage, but he works and has sports on Saturday. One of our local public HSs and a local private offer it Weds. D did the same two years ago so as not to miss youth orchestra on Saturday.</p>
<p>PAMom, I want to say that you should throw caution away and allow yourself to be deliriously happy. The PA score is not going to jump another 4 points this year. It just isn’t. I’ll bet anything. Last year was crazy and sad for a lot of people who hadn’t seen such jumps. Scores had been relatively stable for several years and people were taken off guard. But there won’t be such huge jumps 2 years in a row.</p>
<p>PAMom, I see your point. I think the scoring is set up so that statistically there isn’t an advantage (or at least the appearance of an advantage) to a particular version of the test. CB doesn’t want a higher percentage of NMSF coming from one test date, so the scoring is tweaked. I don’t suppose there is any consideration of whether there are smarter kids taking the test on one day or another. I guess that can cut both ways. In the past 2 years, the curve has been more generous in CR for the Saturday test, but overall more generous for Wednesday (at least at the very top percentiles). Kids who struggle with CR but ace math and writing would have better overall scores if they took the test on Saturday.</p>
<p>I personally think they need to make the PSAT harder, either by adding one or two questions to each section or by increasing the percentage of hard questions. Then one careless mistake wouldn’t be so devastating and kids wouldn’t need near perfect scores to make NMSF. Maybe College Board agrees with me - there were 2 more questions rated as “hard” this year compared to last year.</p>
<p>And while I understand the logic behind the state by state cutoffs, I really think there should be a national cutoff (everyone from a high cutoff state agrees, right?). Maybe have National Merit Finalists and State Merit Finalists! (:</p>
<p>Barfly, I hear you on the national cut. It does seem fairest of all to me. We live on the border of 4 states, with 4 different cuts. It’s hard to imagine that moving 5 minutes away could mean the difference between a yes and a no.</p>
<p>DS IS a math/writing kid, and we did have the verbal scoring advantage with Saturday’s test, but his overall score would actually still be a point higher on the Wednesday test, for the same number of incorrect answers. The writing scoring is what hurt him the most (that 2nd error cost 5 additional points).</p>
<p>Celeste, I am deliriously happy about 95% of the time, now that I’ve analyzed a lot of data. Some things still cause panic though, like the fact that the sophomores from last year in PA seem to be a higher scoring group than average. 9 months is a long time to keep my fingers crossed, so I really hope you are right. If PA does jump 4 points, I know I’ll have lots of company on the “just missed” threads.</p>
<p>Hang in there mangoking, my son’s PA score as a sophomore was 209, and I’m tentatively “deliriously happy” with this year’s 220. He’s a math kid too. Your 67 in verbal is most impressive to me.</p>
<p>Got a 209. Last year was 210 for michigan. Do you think im expected to get it? Score cutoff has usually been 207-211. Mean is 209. So far I’ve been hearing rumors that it will decrease a little bit. The curve was harsh. But I’ve been hearing of quite a few 210+ granted all the smart people I talk to, and the smartest region in the state. PLEASE CHANCE ME…so nervous.</p>
<p>PAmom21 - I totally understand your angst --but I would think that the Sophomore group performing unusually well last year would be more of an indication that last year’s test was easier. Especially since I see so many people saying that their Junior (who took it last year as a sophomore as well), saw a drop in their score this year or thought that this year’s test was more difficult than last year. That makes more sense to me than one year’s test takers being smarter than all of those in the past decade. I hope I’m right! (I really want to be the optimist here.)</p>
<p>I got a 214 in MN so i just have to wait until next september, but judging from what others are saying, I can still keep my hopes up!</p>
<p>As a side note, I noticed on my score report that it said I was 98th percentile. Is the percentile based on last year’s test takers, like the understanding the 2013 psat pdf, or is that actually the national percentile for the class of 2015?</p>
<p>Good point Luvmygirls! I also realized, with more digging, that in PA at least, the number of juniors is substantially higher than the number of sophomores testing. I believe that perhaps the more seriously minded, and possibly higher scoring sophomores are the ones that test. The trend continued for multiple years, with sophomores in PA scoring considerably above the national mean, with juniors scoring much closer to the mean. </p>
<p>Good luck to all of our borderline scorers!</p>
<p>downhillskater91, I think the percentile on the score report is the same as shown on the Understanding the 2013 PSAT pdf, so, in other words, your score report doesn’t show your actual percentile - just an estimate based on the 2012 test-takers. But sometime around February apparently, the College Board website will be updated to show state by state data for the 2013 test, and I think that may be based on the 2013 test takers. </p>
<p>I guess one way to confirm the percentiles is to see if there is anyone whose score report shows a different percentile than on the Understanding the 2013 PSAT pdf. Anyone?</p>
<p>Downhill, I sent you a PM. The percentile on the score report is definitely based on students who took the 2012 PSAT. It says so on the Understanding 2013 report and I was able to confirm it by comparing my son’s percentiles from 2012 to the 2011 and 2012 reports.</p>
<p>@Barfly
Maybe College Board agrees with me - there were 2 more questions rated as “hard” this year compared to last year.</p>
<p>I been curious if this years test is harder or the same as last. Did you find 2 extra hard questions per area or just 2 more on the entire test?</p>
<p>I’m very curious where the selection scores break for 99 and 99+</p>
<p>WashJohnGalt, just 2 more overall. 1 in CR and 1 in Math. But the writing section may have been easier, as 2013 had the same number of hard questions, but 6 more easy questions and 6 fewer medium questions as compared to 2012!</p>
<p>Interesting. Have they done this type of change in the past? </p>
<p>Two harder questions would seem to mean the test would be more difficult. </p>
<p>I thought maybe you could ascertain test difficulty by the curves. But looking at the curves for the last 4 years doesn’t seem to correlate with cutoff scores. Perhaps the curves are only used to equalize the 2 test dates and bear only a rough correlation to previous years??</p>