We have focused solely on ACT and not PSAT. This may have helped tremendously.
@dazedaura I got the Harvard Summer School email, but I’m not sure if that means anything…
@highcoll I feel the same way reguarding how many people claim that they improved so much, not to insult anyone.
I just want to give some perspective on the test difficulty. People on College Confidential have claimed the test was easy, but I have yet to meet a person outside of this site who claimed near perfect scores. Most of my junior class found it at least somewhat difficult, as did other online communities on tumblr, instagram, and twitter.
@highcoll
My guess is that the new test is easier for some people and harder for others. But you make a good point that a jump in scores from sophomore to junior year could come from the fact that certain people do significantly better on the new test. It also true that many people don’t start serious prep until after their sophomore PSAT.
I think CB’s idea was to align the new test closer to the school curriculum (at least the Common Core school curriculum), and to take out those strange questions that tested skills you would never learn or use in school or real life. If you are very good at Common Core skills because you picked them up in school or elsewhere, the test is easier. If you did not pick up strong Common Core skills in school or on your own, the test is harder.
Median SAT verbal scores have been sinking for a long time. CB keeps looking for ways to shore them up and to stem the flow of students to the ACT.
The old bizarre, head-scratcher math problems and recondite vocabulary questions probably helped to knock off some people from the top. Without these, the top might be more crowded than ever. If it is, I guess CB will have to bring back some tougher questions of one kind or another.
I posted a more detailed analysis about this on another thread entitled “Is the Redesigned SAT Harder or Easier?”
So, more data to ponder. MY PSAT score last year was a 217. I found the new PSAT to be easier than the old PSAT and felt I should have done enough to qualify for semifinalist (I am in a very high cutoff state.) But, now I am not so sure. If you need a near perfect score in DC, Boston, or California, then I may not have made it. I am not convinced that they used scores from last year for the TASP emails, but I have no evidence to indicate that they lied. If they did not lie to me, then they are not using NMS cutoffs for TASP emails.
For the old cutoff of 224, you needed around a -5 I believe (not completely sure on this). Assuming the new test was easier for most, perhaps the cut off will be -4/-3ish?
I worked this out a few years ago. My recollection is that -5 was sufficient for the highest cutoff in past years.
But havn’t the number of questions changed- I think the new PSAT has 138 questions and the old PSAT had 125 questions… someone correct me if I’m wrong.
More questions means you can get more wrong, right (each one worth less)?
edited to add- yes, just confirmed, 10 extra questions on math and 3 extra on verbal/CR.
Everyone has one college board account. If you put in a new email i would assume they would change it on your account. Sophmores do significantly worse on the test than juniors so lower scores would be in a higher percentile.
i doubt Telluride would be deceptive about this because it will be obvious in 2 weeks.
Question: As a sophomore who took the official PSAT/NMSQT in October, am I eligible for NMSF? Our school has all sophomores and juniors take the test.
@dazedaura I recieved the summer school email
@tennis83 those are excellent points, actually. My son’s 185 was 95% in reading and writing and 94% in math. The score report says that is nationally. He studied not an ounce for it sophomore year and did put some effort in for the one junior year. Just more data to ponder for those smart/interested enough to try to put things together.
If this helps at all, I’m a URM who got a 217 on the PSAT last year and got the TASP invite (and the Harvard summer school thing). I live in California and I think I did good enough this year to qualify for National Merit. I also put down a STEM major on my PSAT (I think).
I got a Harvard email on Dec. 3rd about some Minority Recruitment Program.
@ekim5984, no, you have to be a junior for NMS. This was probably a good year to test the waters rather than have it count. It is possible to score high enough sophomore year, but lower junior year, and then not make it. Only the junior year scores count. So hopefully you can hit it out of the park next October.
I think I said this earlier, but I’m in a state where the cutoff was 215 last year. I scored a 206 last year (which is 99th %ile for sophomores), and didn’t get the TASP invite. I said “no” to the Student Search Service and marked engineering as my intended major. I am caucasian. I got the RSI invite and a Cornell invite though. I don’t know if this affects things, but I was expecting to improve a lot because I studied and have gotten 2300 on the SAT since then, and got a 1450 (and a selection index of 218) on the official practice PSAT.
Oh, and a funny note on the Harvard summer school thing. My son got it this year as well. However, my son is currently a freshman in college. He is young for college, so I’m guessing they used birthdate in their somewhere, but after all their comments about how they are watching his academic career, you’d think they would know he graduated high school in 2015. And while he was young, he’d been in that class for quite a few years, this wasn’t a last minute early graduation.
With all this talk about TASP, my curiosity was piqued. I found the website and read the course descriptions offered. Do others agree that there’s definitely a liberal bent to the courses as described? There is one called “Black Lives Matter” and the others seem to skew to a social justice theme. This blatant pushing of a certain point of view is disturbing to me. I don’t care if the program is free; I would never bother with a program that was so light on critical thinking.
@chillkitty definitely but that’s what I expect from colleges nowadays- I would be surprised if TASP offered moral theology courses or something like that lol. But I have no intention of applying, so the only reason I’m bothered about not getting the email is that it may signify that I didn’t score well enough on the PSAT to be a semifinalist
If TASP truly has information about who the high scorers from the PSAT were, which seems likely, then we can get an idea of how we did on the PSAT. I doubt that most people care enough about TASP to fill 6 pages of this thread today with speculation.