At $8,000 to $12,000 a pop for a 3 or 4 week session, they will not be getting my money…the IPhone will be cheaper and the college board gets the rest for PSAT/SAT testing.
I’m 99% sure the Stanford thing is bullshit. I used a different email for the PSAT this year than I did last year and the followup email was sent to my old email address. It’s probably completely arbitrary, seeing as I scored a 190 last year which wasn’t even in the top 5%.
@likestowrite I agree with your point more. I mean, I’ve been getting emails for ages now…
@workinghard1234 is a sophomore and is getting mail. For me, that confirms that they have lists from this year’s tests but not actual scores.
I hope in 20 days, everyone reports their scores so we can see how well we estimated based on mail.
Bummed that my D got the TASP e-mail but has no interest in applying.
Is everyone actually hoping to go to a nm scholarship college or do you just want the honor?
@nw2this As a current junior, not only do I want the honor, but truth be told, from my experiences with my current senior class, the people who got accepted to Yale and Cornell were all those who were National Merit Semifinalists, while those were not all got deferred or rejected. Not saying that being a NMS immediately gets you in, but I’d say that being the top 16,000 of your entire class in the nation is a huge honor and looks extremely appealing to colleges that may not be a NM scholarship college.
Since most students in the running for schools like that will be nmsf, it won’t really do much to distinguish your application.
@nw2this Actually “most” students in the running for elite schools won’t be NMF of NMSF. To be a NMF from a NE boarding school or from many of the northeastern states you have to score in the top one third of one percent, if not higher.
I’m not sure I get your math. Median score for Yale is ~2265, nmsf cuts-off in the past ranged from ~204 - 225. So, most Yale students would be nmsf.
Many students experience a huge score jump from their cold junior year PSAT to the SAT though…
Based on what I know about how decisions are made at Telluride, I think it is really, really unlikely that invitations to apply to TASP 2016 would be sent out based on October 2014 PSAT scores. There would be no reason whatsoever to do that. The people making the decisions are a tiny group of Cornell undergraduates. They don’t follow automatic procedures. They sit around a table and vote on every decision. They think about what they are doing. They would wait until this year’s PSAT score percentiles were available to send the invitations out.
I take the fact that TASP invitations were sent out as evidence that CB has already determined at least the percentiles of this year’s PSAT test results.
It could be that the internal CB debate is about what percentile constitutes being “on track” for college (i.e., the “enhanced” part of the score report).
I don’t know what the TASP invitation percentile cutoff is, and I also don’t know whether it varies by region. As I remember, it was higher than the NMS cutoff (although this may have changed). In any case, I don’t think that the fact that a student did not receive an invitation means that his or her PSAT scores are not excellent. You may still have made the NMS cutoff. Or you may have neglected to check off the TASP box on the PSAT form. If you did receive an invitation, that is probably a good sign about your scores.
I agree with @Plotinus that determining what percentile constitutes being “on track” for college is a decision that probably has people at the College Board arguing.
For the Smarter Balanced (and probably PARCC) tests, somehow a bunch of states mostly agreed (at least temporarily) on a set of standards and tests. Then, when it came to setting cutoffs, the states set widely different ones and even named the scoring bands different things. Even going from 5 scoring bands to 4 was a controversial decision. States that are sticking with Common Core will probably still be renaming scoring bands and adjusting cutoffs for several years. Because David Coleman moved from Common Core architect to president of the College Board and decided that the PSAT/SAT should be more like Common Core, a lot of the political issues with cutoff-setting and naming followed along.
If you look at the sample PSAT score sheet, there are very small yellow ranges for the on-track bar. That is odd compared to the normal size of the “approaching benchmark” range on a lot of recent tests like SBAC. I would guess that people within College Board (and the states as “customers”) would disagree strongly about the size of that yellow range.
Common Core test results have been dismal, especially in math. In addition, the gap between white and minority performance levels has been enormous. On the old SAT, 500 was the median score and also the “college ready” score, meaning that about 50% of test-takers were on track. The percentages of “on track” Common Core test scores have been lower, and in some states and populations, much, much lower. The potatoes might be really hot.
@nw2this even though none of my kids are eligible for National Merit this year, the end goal is to go to a college that offers $$ for National Merit. My DD16 is currently a NMSF (very likely NMF) who will be attending OU a perfect fit for her major and other other interests. DS18 is very interested in UTD. DS20 isn’t really thinking about college yet but when the time comes we’ll encourage him to look for schools that offer $$ merit.
@nw2this Half of NMF receive merit scholarships, and so the college they attend is tracked. According to the 2013-14 Annual Report, 180 Merit Award recipients attended Yale. Five or six schools beat out Yale, including Harvard, Chicago, Northwestern, Standord, Oklahoma, U. California, and Vanderbilt.
My brother goes to Vanderbilt and he says that he has’t met anyone that wasn’t at least commended and most of his friends were finalists!
You’re about 42 pages too late!
This thread reminds me of my dog chasing his tail :). We’re not getting anywhere, but I’m assuming we’re all enjoying ourselves.
@MotherOfDragons Yes, its kind of been fun overanalyzing the details of this process. Just goes to show you that the devil is in the details. My kids has a minimal chance of beating the threshold since he will have to exceed the highest cutoff, and I have a feel that cutoff will be VERY HIGH with this test being so easy. He’d likely have to have only 2 or 3 wrong in the entire test. (Pure speculation based on the time spent overanalyzing this thread!).
I am curious about the Stanford letter. DS got the letter in the mail but then also got an email reminding him about the letter. I believe college board must really have sent out the scores because he used my email for the PSAT not the email that was set up for his college board account… although even if it was the top 5% it doesn’t mean he will even be in the commended range.
If TASP is based on this year’s PSAT scores, then this means that the CB already knows the scores, right? So what’s the big deal about that? Didn’t they say that they already know the scores, they just delayed to get the new score reporting thing all sorted out?
It is not usual for CB to miss deadlines like this. Some students made study plans assuming they would have their scores by mid-December. CB has been dropping the ball a lot lately. Look at what happened last June. People are angry.