Yes, Commended scholars come from the top 4%. So, it is possible to get that email and miss commended, but I hope your D made it.
I’m pretty sure the Brown email has very little meaning. It is one of those programs that sends all of those emails out regularly. And the actual email doesn’t make me think they based it on the most recent PSAT.
CollegeBoard has really made a mess of this entire thing. All of this speculation could have been avoided if they were just properly prepared for the release and gave us our scores on time.
On the College Board website, it states that the only groups that receive actual PSAT scores are the specific group of scholarship/opportunity providers: namely, the National Merit Scholarship Service, the National Hispanic Recognition Program, the National Scholarship Service, and Telluride. Stanford and Brown summer programs wouldn’t know anything about a student’s score except for what percentile they scored in.
It seems that the confusion surrounding the Student Search Service, TASP, and National Merit is partially due to the ambiguous explanations on collegeboard.org. Perhaps that is intentional.
For anyone that received an email regarding the RSI program, could you describe the general content of the email? At the beginning of this months I received an email discussing the RSI, USABO, and TEP programs and am curious if this holds any weight?
A question for the students here: Did any of you opt-out of having your information forwarded to the organizations that the CB states can/may be recipients of information regarding student performance?
My daughter opted out last year, as well as this (her senior year) when she took her SAT.
Thank you all for letting me know about the particular areas of concern. I am aware that the College Board seems to be in terrible trouble adhering to their stated time frames for notification, and so my family has simply not checked in to see what the delay is for my child who took the PSAT this year.
@MichiganGeorgia Your 9th grader may not receive emails regarding some of these programs because he/she is not yet old enough to participate. From the info I have seen: for the Stanford program, a student must be at least 16, and for Telluride a student must be a junior to apply.
I’m getting scared now since I didn’t get any of these emails you guys got. I got emails from different colleges and universities, but didn’t get any from Stanford, or the TASP and RIT ones. Does that mean that I don’t have a chance at even being commended?
@YoohooAddict nothing is certain at this point. We know that a lot of people have gotten this mail, but honestly College Board is so murky at this point, it’s really difficult to know anything. I would guess that your chances are somewhat slim, but it’s really hard to have a definitive answer at this point. Just hold tight until January 7- at least you will know your percentile rank by then.
What does the Stanford email look like? I got a physical form from Stanford congratulating me on my “academic achievements” and inviting me to their summer program. I didn’t get anything from TASP or Yuletide.
The Stanford email is basically just a confirmation that they sent you the physical letter. So if you got physical letter that’s what matters and perhaps they just didn’t have your email or it got stuck in your spam folder.
I’m really not happy about the delay.I told my son he was done with testing but now since the PSAT isn’t back I have signed him up for the January testing just in case his PSAT score is high enough. I’m still not sure what the cutoff’s for the SAT’s will be this year…
@MichiganGeorgia the January SAT is old format. If your son did well on PSAT it would have been better to have him take March SAT, which is new format.
I’d be skeptical of any letter or e-mail that doesn’t cite where the info. came from and/or cannot be directly linked back to the College Board (either by disclosure on the letter or by information that College Board itself provides).
I can only reference the Stanford letter because that’s all that D3 got at this point. It’s dated “December 2015” (no specific date) and congratulates her “on your outstanding academic achievements” (not the PSAT, not her GPA, not anything specific). Then it invites her to apply to the summer programs. She didn’t even get this till Dec. 24 when so many others obviously had received something nearly three weeks prior. For all I know it got her name from ACT and just sent out invites from that list LOL.
@zaarp was the 2015 PSAT your first and only (at this point) College Board test? If so, then yeah I’d say that the Columbia letter is a better indicator as to how you did on the PSAT than the Stanford letter would be - Stanford didn’t mention where they got D3’s information from.
@Mamelot I took the SAT but I used a different email. I specifically used a different email for the PSAT. Interestingly enough, I did not get a stanford letter. Perhaps it’s geographical? I’m located in NY.
We believe that those summer program emails/letters do not hold weight or anything but just marketing.
However, we can guess where those institutions/programs get our contact information because we used several email addresses. We don’t think school GC has nothing to do with this because he never received those to his high school email address so far.
We’ve been used a family email address for College Board account (PSAT 2014, SAT, AP Exams), but my junior son used his email address for PSAT 2015 (just this time.)
Stanford summer program email was sent to both a family and his email addresses, but TASP email was sent to his only. All emails including CB (Getting ready for your PSAT/NMSQT email) were sent to us on Dec 17th.
His Sophomore PSAT 2014 score was above the NMSF cut in our state. We’ve also received Brown and Stanford summer program emails/letters in last year, but not TASP (TASP is not for rising Juniors so it makes sense.)
For snail mails, we usually just toss away as soon as we received it, so I don’t remember exactly when we’ve received from Stanford. As long as I remember, TASP never sent us a letter, but just an email.
I guess @DuelingGloves might receive RSI and USABO thing by participating USABO before and did well?
@suzyQ7 - Normally that would make sense. But DS has already taken the old SAT twice. He has a 2050. I know the old cutoff was 1960 so he should be ok but I am afraid that they are going to have a much higher cutoff this time around. I don’t want him to have to take the new SAT because I think it is going to have to be a lot harder than the new PSAT and he may not do as well on it as the old one. I think college board messed up and made the new PSAT too easy. Of course I could be wrong.