I found this chart interesting. One of the posts up thread said something about how they had a lawsuit and that’s why they have the 1/3,1/3,1/3 because the guys do better on the math and girls are more verbal. But if you look at the
SAT scores for reading for 2015 there are more girls that took the test however when you are talking about 720 and above there were more guys that scored higher.
It was the addition of the writing section that helped balance out the total scores. Doubling verbal on the PSAT helped a bit, I’m sure, but that was actually long before the lawsuit and the changes that resulted from it. I have no idea why the gender balance is so different for critical reading vs. writing, but it is. The old “verbal” apparently also leaned toward higher male scores, but that was back when they had analogies, too.
Look at the scores for writing here:
https://secure-media.collegeboard.org/digitalServices/pdf/sat/sat-percentile-ranks-writing-2015.pdf
But, many colleges look at CR+M, so that must also be skewed male at the top. I guess the new 1600 SAT will have the verbal part be a combination of CR and W, so it will be interesting to see if that leans female overall at the top end.
I’ve read that males tend to be outliers more often than females at both the top and bottom end of many scales.
“Doubling verbal on the PSAT helped a bit, I’m sure, but that was actually long before the lawsuit and the changes that resulted from it.” Didn’t the old verbal PSAT section contain several subsections, which included reading comprehension, vocabulary (analogies) and writing? Was there no writing? I don’t understand why splitting out the writing as a separate section is substantially different.
I came across the following astonishing accusation from a site called “testmasters” that the selection index was implemented to discriminate against Asians. Considering that the selection index seems to have been in use in the 1970’s I find it hard to swallow that it was introduced to discriminate against the high performing children of Asians who immigrated through the 1980’s. As far as I can tell, this dates back to 1971 when NMC started using the PSAT, though I only know it had already been in use for some years as of 1983. It would be interesting to see how many of the winners in the 1970s were Asian.
"Act I: Introduction
The National Merit Scholarship Program began in 1955 as a privately funded academic scholarship program that rewarded outstanding scholastic achievement. In 1971, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation adopted the College Board’s Preliminary SAT exam (PSAT) as the qualifying test for scholarship consideration, and the PSAT/NMSQT was born…
Act II: The Asian Invasion
For about ten years, the PSAT/NMSQT lived a quiet, simple life. But the world was experiencing sweeping economic and societal transitions, and our hero soon found itself being swept away with the tides of change.
Between the end of World War II and the early 1980s, Asian immigration into the United States exploded. During the Space Race of the 1960s, America, led by a youthful and charismatic President Kennedy, made its technological leaps and bounds into space, and the United States’ land of opportunity became especially fertile, attracting immigrants from all over Asia, including India and China. The US even recruited foreigners — going so far as to increase immigration quotas for people with advanced degrees in math and science. Indian people, soon followed by the Chinese, rushed to apply.
As Asian immigrants began settling into American life, their children started making their way through the school systems. Eventually, these children of immigrant families — who just happened to excel at math — began taking the PSAT/NMSQT, and, despite oft-substantial disadvantages in the verbal section, they would perform well enough on the math section to warrant scholarship consideration.
Coincidentally, around this time, the College Board decided to give the PSAT/NMSQT a face lift to raise its total score from 160 to 240 — by counting the verbal score twice. As you might imagine, with this change, getting a qualifying score became significantly more difficult for a certain group of individuals. No changes were made to the format or content of the PSAT/NMSQT — both the length of the verbal section and the difficulty of the questions remained the same. This change put certain ethnic groups (guess which ones) whose primary language may not have been English at a disadvantage for National Merit Scholarship consideration. Luckily, this scoring system didn’t last forever; in 1997, a different group of individuals took issue with the PSAT scoring system and instigated a revamping of the test.""
Psat 2015 contained a paragraph mostly in spanish. The test contained a passage written in spanish that my child could not understand since he speaks english. It was the conversation between the mother and daughter and there were many question relating to this. If you don,t understand the language how can you answer compehension questions. My son was upset since he got most of these wrong. I guess I always thought that in the united states tests would be in english.
@mommyimp There were no questions that tested your child’s comprehension in Spanish, and in fact, there were no passages that were “mostly in spanish”. Your child simply isn’t telling you the truth.
Don’t mean to come off as rude, but I don’t think test questions are to be discussed. @mommyimp
There was a passage about an argumentative girl with a name that appears Spanish (common knowledge on social media humor regarding the PSAT.) Maybe the test taker was confused.
Surprised you say no real trickiness. The first passage of the test contained large amounts of conversation in spanish. It through my son off for the rest of the test and of course he had no idea what was being said. I call this very tricky. How did you answer questions based on text written in a foreign language? Or do you speak spanish.
My link to the PSAT percentile ranks from 1977 was prohibited by a moderator. I thought it was innocent documentation of historical trends in PSAT scoring.
Anyone is interested in consulting this table can find it by googling “1974 PSAT Percentile Rankings”.
My dd is standing here, so I read her your post. She does not speak Spanish and has never studied Spanish. She says that she did not have any problems with that passage and that she did not need to know Spanish to be able to answer the questions. She says she just skipped the non-English portions and read the English portions. She says she doesn’t think she missed any of the questions. But, of course, she has no idea if her answers were right or wrong.
(Is that considered discussing the questions? If so, moderator please delete. I’m not sure if vague generalities like that are allowed.)
I second @Mom2aphysicsgeek , I myself took the PSAT. I do speak some spanish, but I did not understand the spanish being spoken in the passage. However, I do not think understanding the spanish was essential for understanding the passage as I had no problem answering the questions.
I’m assuming because you’re a parent you haven’t actually seen the passage? As someone who took the test and knows absolutely no Spanish, it was fine. Other than like a two word greeting in Spanish which had no effect on the meaning of the passage whatsoever, everything was in English.
My Junior is taking Latin and Freshman is taking French. Neither one knows Spanish. They didn’t say anything about any Spanish on the test. If there had been a lot of Spanish my freshman would have been complaining about it.
Like I said, comprehension of foreign language is not tested. It would be a scandal for the collegeboard to do so.
I asked my freshman just to confirm about the Spanish. At first he was “What are you talking about .There was no Spanish on the test!” . Then after he thought about it he said “oh , ok there was a girls name and 2 words in Spanish but it wasn’t a big deal”. He then went into quite a lot of detail about the passage and what the questions were and how knowing the 2 words weren’t necessary to answering the questions. Actually I was surprised at how much he remember about it. I agree the college board would get into hot water if they actually put a bunch of Spanish on the test.
This is the first time I’m hearing about anything in Spanish on the PSAT. D3 never mentioned it at all so either it was completely unremarkable, or she is taking my advice not to discuss the test very seriously indeed 
There are many SAT reading passages about non-English language speakers that have a foreign word or phrase thrown in here or there.
c’est la vie
One more thing. I talked to my Junior. He did not have the same passage as my Freshman. He too said that there were a few words in Spanish. However he said that even though he doesn’t know Spanish he knew the words used except for one word AND that word had a * by it and the meaning of the word was explained after the passage.
@MichiganGeorgia There’s no reason that they’d have different passages unless your freshman was taking the PSAT 8/9.