Exactly @Plotinus - I am focusing my son on ACT 100% now. We scheduled that test when I found out about this delay. Not that I wouldn’t have had him try it anyway (he’s taken some proctored practice ACT tests and done well) but he really liked the new SAT/PSAT based on the official practice tests we did before PSAT. At this point, I think CB is unreliable and I’m not trusting that the SAT coming out in March will be as easy as the official practice tests. Its too risky to hang our hat on SAT this year. Plus the 2 month delay in March for results could end up being 3 months or more based on this recent experience. That would put us results-less before the June sitting. Not a place a junior wants to be!
To continue the tail chasing fun, DD got Penn Engineering Summer Academy post card which I just recycled.
I’m interested in seeing statistics about how many new test-takers ACT gains this year after the rollout of the new SAT 
One test prep company in our area counseled juniors to avoid the SAT altogether this year and just focus on ACT. No track record, long expected turnaround for the March test, etc. And they said this in September - BEFORE all the problems with the PSAT!! At first I just figured that they didn’t have anything to add to the prep over and above what Khan was providing for free . . . now I’m thinking that they were actually quite prescient!!
Not to feed the speculation, but I got the TASP email as well as the Stanford letter. While I took the test twice, they sent it to the email I put down for this year. I had incorrectly bubbled in my other email address the other year. Just my two cents, but I do think CB has sent out the scores.
Damn, I didn’t get the TASP email. No NM for me. 
But…if you did not mark the area to indicate you want emails and letters from colleges then you would not get those letters and emails, right?
The letters are definitely from this year. I have gotten emails from Brown, Columbia, and George Washington and it cannot be from last year because I got a 155.
Are you a Junior?
Is it really true that if you didn’t get the TASP email that you didn’t get nm? I got the Colombia and Stanford ones as well as Colby college but not TASP so I was just wondering.
@workinghard1234 I am a sophomore
Both of my children got the Stanford email and letter (daughter is a sophomore), but no TASP. My junior son got Colby yesterday, but daughter didn’t. My son got some emails from Columbia back in October, but nothing recently. This ain’t right.
I think we’ll just have to wait and see because no real conclusion can be drawn from these emails. Everything seems to be speculation at this stage but nonetheless, I’m somewhat worried that I didn’t get the RSI and TASP emails which seemed to have been sent to those with the highest scores.
That leaves about 8,000 nmsf that did not get money. They didn’t get money because they probably elected to go to elite schools like HYPS that do not give out nm awards. Each of these schools has a freshman class of only ~2000. Most of these freshman were nmsf or like @workinghard1234 says at least commended or national Hispanic, or national achievement.
No. There are only 2500 National Merit scholars. Some of the rest win corporate scholarships from parents’ employers or they get college-sponsored awards.
@joeweller I wouldn’t draw this conclusion. As I said in a previous post, the TASP cutoffs may be higher than the NMS cutoffs. The number of TASP applications and awards is much smaller. You have to wait until the scores come out.
@mathyone, says 7400 are winners of NMS. Some kids win finalist ( 15k finalists) but don’t go to colleges that give awards and dont win the 2500 prize, that’s why 7400 are left instead of 15k. I’m not sure, out of the 7400, how many win the small $2500 scholarship vs corporate vs. The college sponsored (which is the one most of us is vying for). It doesn’t specify on the main page, but it appears that you cant get BOTH the 2500 and the college sponsored one.
Winner Selection
All winners of Merit Scholarship® awards (Merit Scholar® designees) are chosen from the Finalist group…
"Beginning in March and continuing to mid-June, NMSC notifies approximately 7,400 Finalists at their home addresses that they have been selected to receive a Merit Scholarship® award. Merit Scholarship awards are of three types:
National Merit® $2500 Scholarships
Every Finalist competes for these single payment scholarships, which are awarded on a state-representational basis. Winners are selected without consideration of family financial circumstances, college choice, or major and career plans.
Corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards
Corporate sponsors designate their awards for children of their employees or members, for residents of a community where a company has operations, or for Finalists with career plans the sponsor wishes to encourage. These scholarships may either be renewable for four years of undergraduate study or one-time awards.
College-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards
Officials of each sponsor college select winners of their awards from Finalists who have been accepted for admission and have informed NMSC by the published deadlines that the sponsor college or university is their first choice. These awards are renewable for up to four years of undergraduate study. The published deadlines for reporting a sponsor college as first choice can be viewed on page 3 of the Requirements and Instructions for Semifinalists in the 2016 National Merit® Scholarship Program. (Adobe Acrobat Reader is required.)"
Settle down-nobody knows what score they got this year. As Abe Lincoln said, “it is what it is.” Or maybe that was John Lennon. Regardless, there’s no sense stressing about what may not be an accurate correlation.
Also @Plotinus I think it is worth mentioning that it really depends on whether College Board sent the percentiles out as National or State Specific. I would assume they sent out the national ones, but if not, that could explain some of the emails. Of course, if you live in a state that normally has a high cut off, I guess it wouldn’t matter. Either way, I don’t think that it is a firm no if one didn’t get the TASP email.
My memory is that the TASP invitation cutoff was quite a bit higher than the NMS cutoff. Telluride does not list the cutoff on the website, but googling around I found many students with 230+ PSAT scores (old format) reporting they had received TASP invitations. I recall that my fellow TASPers had made NMS easily. This makes sense if you consider that the order of magnitude of submitted TASP applications is 1000, and the order of magnitude of accepted students per year is 100. The numbers for NMS are much larger.
CB sends out whatever data the institutions request and pay for. It does not send the same data to all institutions.
As I said before, I don’t know if the TASP cutoffs are regional or national, but I would not be surprised if they were national. It may be that there are lower cutoffs for under-represented groups. While there was an even division between men and women, there were 0 students from under-represented groups when I went to TASP, and this would probably no longer be acceptable.