**PSAT Discussion Thread 2015**

@samsunguser 10 Minutes ago this thread was 6 pages long, but the latter 3 pages were wiped out of existence. Guess everybody’s learned their lesson (including myself) and stopped talking about the questions.

I also took the test today and found that the reading and writing were very similar to the practice one by CB. Math caught me off guard a little because the numbers seemed harder to calculate with. Any one know if the version that others take on the 28th will be the same as ours or different?

I believe they were different last year with the two tests 3 days apart – at least the Twitter #PSAT memes were different. So, I expect they will be different this year with the two tests 2 weeks apart.

@a20171 my D3’s index was 213 and she was surprised because she thought the practice PSAT was noticeably more difficult than the practice SAT she had taken just two weeks prior. But once we adjusted her higher SAT score (I just multiplied by .95 to scale it down to PSAT size) the two scores turned out to be essentially the same. So the PSAT conversion tables must have been a bit nicer. It’s all relative (even if the “relative” part is kinda hypothetical at this very early stage).

My daughter reviewed her answers in the CR section and had just erased one response to change it when they announced “pencils down.” Oh well.

Other than that, no comment. Now we wait.

I took it today. I’m confident that I only missed one on math and one on writing, but I’m sure I missed quite a few on reading. Is national merit decided on a scale that favors math or on one that weighs each section equally? My state’s cutoff was 211 last year, so I’m thinking I would have had to miss only 6 on reading to get that (assuming that all sections are weighed equally). What do you guys think?

In summary:
R: -?
W: -1
M: -1
last year’s cutoff: 211

I really liked how the new PSAT only has a few sections. For the old SAT, I hated working in short bursts because it burned my brain out from switching between subjects so quickly.

Both English parts on this were not bad, thank god. Actually kinda easy! No hard vocab or confusing grammar/structure questions or anything. Much more straight-forward, I think, than the old version. The given passages weren’t very hard to understand, either.

Okay, I’m very bad at math. I took a Kaplan practice SAT for the old version a month ago and didn’t finish like 10+ math questions (I seriously did not know how to do any of them) - but I found this PSAT is be much easier! It covers more subjects but not as in depth, actually. There were a few math questions on this PSAT that I was like ??? but it was pretty typical confusion (just need to study more and learn how to set up stuff), but it was nothing like the old SAT where I was like ??? I didn’t study for the Kaplan old SAT or this new PSAT, just so you know where I’m coming from.

(I hope I’m not being too specific here, don’t want to get into trouble.)

-4 math
-6 reading
-0 grammar
Do you guys think I’ve got any shot at NMS?

@ambitionsquared https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/scoring-psat-nmsqt-practice-test-1.pdf use this for a rough estimate. Although, it depends on what state you live in. If it’s Montana you’re a sure shot.

@Dylan197 Thanks for the link. According to the chart I would get 218, which would be sufficient for any state according to prepscholar, but I don’t know how valid their predictions are.

Its not scored like that any more.

@jym626 I’m not saying he should use the scoring calculations. Just the table that they provide to find his index score.

The prepscholar cutoffs seem REALLY low. And I do think that link is accurate for scoring…

For the no calculator math, how many answer-multiple-questions-based-on-this-info sections were there?

@Dylan197 What makes you think that the score chart for the practice test will be the same or even close to the same as the real test? FWIW when D16 took the SAT she lost 50 points for missing ONE math question but almost every other sitting of the SAT, missing one would be like 20-30 points off or even 0 depending on the test. I also don’t put much stock in PrepScholars predictions.

How do you guys even know how many questions you missed already?

@JuicyMango pretty sure they’re estimating

@FutureMMAChamp Where could this person possibly have gotten a test on 10/4??? This burns me up. ITs one thing to discuss a test you’ve already taken - but this person HAD the test and had the nerve to post questions on here. Where did it come from?

I can’t even estimate because no one in my school talks about the PSAT and I have no idea what’s “really” right or wrong…I mean I guess I did good in math and writing but I always feel like reading is subjective.

anyone remember how many groups of multiple questions for a single scenario there were for no-calculator math or just math in general?