I live in California and the national merit cutoff score is 221. I’m really confused with the new PSAT’s scoring and 8-38 scale.
So I’m wondering how many questions can I get wrong on the new PSAT and still make the national merit 221 score cutoff??
No one knows what each question will be worth yet, there’s also no guarantee the CA score will be 221 again.
Yea, I understand that. Can you come up with an estimate of the maximum questions students usually miss and still make it to national merit??
On the official 2015 test DS18 missed:
reading 2 (SI 37)
writing 1 (SI 37)
math 1 (SI 38)
total SI 224
On the official 2016 PSAT10 he missed:
reading 2 (SI 37)
writing 2 (SI 37)
math 2 (SI 37)
total SI 222
Based on this I’d guess you can miss 6 maybe 7 and still make a 221 but it’s only a guess. Just do your best! Every test is different, one year DD16 only missed one math question and lost 50 points on the SAT!
I threw this together quickly so it may not be perfect, but to get a 221 here are 4 scenarios that will work:
- If you get a 760 on the reading/writing you can get as low as a 690 math
- 750 would require a 710 math
- 740 would require a 730 math
- 730 would require a 750 math
There are many ways to arrive at those 4 scores.
On Practice PSAT #1 if you have 760 reading/writing score( which meant you had no more than 1 reading wrong and zero writing) you could get as many as 10 math wrong to get the required 690. That would mean 11 total for that scenario.
If you had a 750 or 760 math (up to 3 wrong) you could get wrong either 1 reading/4 writing, 2-3 reading/3 writing, 4 reading/2 writing to get the needed 730. In this scenario you could get 8 or 9 total wrong.
Just as a rough guideline based ONLY on the PSAT #1 scale, 11 would be the most you could get wrong, but no more than 10 can be Math, and no more than 6 English(with no more than 4 reading or 4 writing).