My daughter is a junior this year. She has social anxiety and occasional test anxiety (though not enough to qualify for any accommodation). She’s fine if the test is administered well, but during the 4th section of the PSAT the proctor announced there were only a few minutes remaining when in fact there were 17 more minutes than her announcement. My daughter panicked and wasted valuable minutes freaking out. She finally spoke up a few minutes later, and the proctor admitted she was wrong and corrected herself. This probably didn’t affect other students but it definitely affected my daughter, since it involved correcting an adult and her social anxiety.
We asked for an incident report immediately from our daughter’s school and they filed it. We have heard nothing from the College Board. We wrote to the College Board as well and got a canned response with instructions on what to do if she couldn’t take the test. My interpretation is that they didn’t read the email.
In the meantime, she took the November SAT without incident and scored a National Merit equivalent score of 222, which would qualify her for National Merit in our state. Does anyone have any suggestions for next steps? I’m frustrated with the lack of a relevant response, and I’m going to be pretty ticked if her performance on that 4th section prevents her from qualifying.
Make sure that you didn't use any test scores over 38 to calculate your equivalent NMSF score from the PSAT
One test cannot pinpoint the score on another. That is why they give ranges. My DS would have qualified for NMSF if he could have used his 10 grade scores. If we did what you did with his Nov SAT, he wouldn't make it (bad day). Did he actually make it? Will find out soon.
What do you want them to do? One of the criticisms of NM is that is a one shot test. If you are sick or have something else happen, you are out of luck.
It’ll be interesting to see if they do something but seems unlikely.
My kid didn’t get NM because he misbubbled a small portion of the end of the math test. He took the test in a new to him space with a couple hundred kids in an auditorium with tiny ancient flip up desks that didn’t have enough space for a standard notebook. He said he was trying to balance scratch paper, his answer sheet, his test booklet and calculator. Oh well - luckily he had a great day on a full size table the last time he took the ACT. None of the schools that are super generous with NM money were of interest to him anyway.
I do think the particular focus on the one shot NM is kind of strange and it does seem like many schools are moving to more holistic viewing of students for merit money.
Not exactly. My D’s appendix burst the night before the psat, so she was able to appeal to use the SAT score instead. If I recall, NM had a form that requires a counselor’s signature.
Unless other students complained or the testing staff completed an irregularity report, I doubt they’ll do anything. It doesn’t sound like a major disruption to me. Some students have had the marching band passing by their room or other slight disturbances. If your daughter doesn’t qualify for any accommodation, I’m not sure what you expect them to do.
PSAT is a one-shot opportunity for National Merit for EVERYONE.
Many factors could affect many students. Since your student does not have accomodations, they will not listen to your issue about the daughter freaking out. There were 20-30 students in the room…your calling could in fact invalidate the test for all of them (if the concern was legit; hence why it is not legit).
The NM is not a huge deal UNLESS you are looking at some state schools that give lots of merit. I think state schools in Texas are an example. Otherwise, honestly, it is just another accolade that most top schools don’t even care about. Why? Because most of their appliants will be NMSF or NMF. Like many above have stated, it is a one shot test. I had 2 kids go through the PSAT testing and both missed NMSF in our state by a point or 2. It did not make the difference in college acceptances at all. Trust me, for some that get the NMSF or NMF they think they are a for-sure thing at many elite/top colleges and that is just plain untrue. Move past this test and focus on other things that matter. Great grades, good test score on SAT/ACT and wonderful ECs.
Look, this isn’t the marching band passing by. This is the proctor messing up the timing of the test (assuming that the daughter’s testimony can be corroborated). The PSAT manual specifies the script and the timing - showing you what to say and when. They even provide a chart that shows you what time (past the hour) to end given your start time. I believe that the monitors are expected to do a run through prior to the actual test, and then follow those procedures. Clearly something failed here.
The issue isn’t whether the daughter should or shouldn’t have freaked out but whether the proctor messed up enough to compromise the standardization of this test for that group of testers. A TESTER had to point out that the announcement was actually incorrect, and that was several minutes after the proctor made the error. Was the proctor being casual with the timing? Proctors goof up - my daughter’s PSAT proctor didn’t even realize that the test had been revised! And yeah, I was a bit ticked off that she apparently was in a state of utter confusion, couldn’t figure out why this test was running longer than expected or why it now had only four sections (this was in 2015, the inaugural year of the revised PSAT). I was obviously very worried that all that distraction as well as my D’s having to explain to the proctor how the test worked now had a negative impact on my tester. OP’s concerns are genuine. Testers shouldn’t feel that they have to counsel or second guess the proctor - that’s obviously not their role, since the proctor is the one ultimately responsible for timing this test. It’s the proctor’s responsibility to ensure fair and accurate timing in accordance with the rules. Watches are for pacing and don’t superscede what the proctor announces.
Little or obvious slip ups with a quick correction are most likely not considered a major infraction. Big ones will violate the standardization of the test, regardless of how well each student performs.
Finally, whether you agree with the focus on NM, or whether you have an opinion on the appropriateness of a one-time test for this contest in the first place, is completely irrelevant to the issue. Would love to know if these angles of argument would even be thought up if, say, the big Championship Game got thrown due to an obvious goofy call by a referee. No one has an issue with a coach asking for a re-visit, looking at instant replays or examining a photo-finish.
Not sure how CB will handle this - they can’t give a special pass to one student. Imagine that they will either toss the test out for the group and offer the SAT or deem it as not serious enough (for instance, the error was caught soon enough that total time was still accurately utilized). A lot will depend on their procedures when an irregularity occurs, as well as an examination of the specific irregularity. Hopefully OP’s daughter still did fine.
But back to the question asked above - what do you want them to do? Fire the proctor? Invalidate the test scores? Give all of them a few extra points on that section? None of that is going to happen. They can let your daughter take the test again, but it won’t be used for NM.
Basically it’s unfair but there is nothing you can do about it. You filed your complaint and that might be helpful to the next set of kids. Maybe they’ll tell proctors not to announce any time, to double check before announcing the time.
My D19 had an issue with testing irregularities when she took the PSAT a year ago. She was testing with audio accommodations and the school had never administered a test with those accommodations before, and it turned into a fiasco. Our HS testing administrator filed an incident report after I complained, and we found out in late November (on 11/27/17) that D19 was allowed to D proceed with Alternate Entry. The notification went to our HS administrator and he called me.
For the benefit of others who may not be aware, if you are allowed to use Alternate Entry then you can submit any SAT score between October-June of your junior year. You can even submit more than one SAT score and they will use the best single sitting. They calculate an SI the same as with the PSAT except that each section is capped at 38, so for example if you have a 40 in math it still only counts as 38. In the end my D19’s SAT score was high enough for her to be Commended but not NMSF. If you’re interested, here’s a link to what happened to her and it was a lot worse than what happened to the OP’s kid. http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/2027447-psat-testing-with-mp3-audio-accommodations-testing-fiasco.html
How and whether to announce the time is in the manual but it’s always possible that a school chooses to ignore that part. CB and NMSC rely on the good will of these schools to administer the test properly and very likely some fall down on that job.
Not sure this poster’s daughter would be the “bad guy” if scores got invalidated (which is highly unlikely here). There are clearly times when that would be the best option - for instance, if students had been shortchanged a good 10 - 15 minutes because the proctor continued unchecked in her error and called Time too early.
OP’s daughter was obviously cognizant of the time remaining, @Sybylla, as she specified that there were 17+ minutes to go (OP didn’t provide exact details but perhaps the proctor missed the 20 min. announcement mark, then erroneously called “5 Min. Remaining” when, in fact, there were 22. Just a guess). Whether others freaked out is irrelevant since it’s a) impossible to tell and b) quite possible that no one else even cared. Level of effort really has nothing to do with whether the proctor was doing her job properly. The proctor owes everyone in that room an accurate accounting of time. There are likely many, many small slip-ups with a quick correction - for instance, missing the 20 minute mark but then calling the proper time remaining a few minutes later - with very likely no consequence. The issue here is that the proctor appeared to be shorting the students by a significant amount of time, and that’s bound to confuse anyone who was paying attention.
These proctors are teachers and counselors at school - they can’t be “fired” and highly doubtful they will even be kept off the next PSAT! Not clear whether OP was simply frustrated or would push to have her daughter’s SAT used in lieu of a tanked PSAT. The latter would be a genuine uphill battle. Hopefully CB will take the complaint seriously.
p. 7 Irregularity: A problem, disruption, or unacceptable behavior during a test administration, including a security incident, misconduct, test question error or ambiguity, or other incident or disturbance. An irregularity may result in a delayed test score or a canceled test score for the student who caused the irregularity or, less frequently, for an entire testing room or school. National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) receives a copy of all Irregularity Reports and reserves the right to make its own judgment about a student’s participation in the National Merit Scholarship Program.
p.12 The testing staff performs a critical role in reporting any and all irregularities. Without this information, we can’t resolve issues that may arise.
OP try calling the National Merit headquarters and telling them your D applied for Alternate Entry. They have people who specifically deal with the Alternate Entry requests so maybe they can tell you if they have a request pending for your D. I found them very helpful at least when it came to general questions about procedure.
