212 is the commended cutoff? Is this national?
^^ Yes. Commended is a national cutoff.
For NC, a 223 SI should be good enough, right? Also, because we get finalist notifications so late, how do colleges know? Do we get to include it on our apps?
You include semifinalist status on your apps. The colleges know that this information typically means you’ll be a finalist.
I don’t think any state is expected to be over 223. @breathesuccess
NJ is usually the highest and expected 222 (223 at most), I think.
Check the compass prep blog.
My son is at 221 in NY, which may or may not be good enough. The tough part is, when I looked at his answer key, he got every math question correct except one that was marked “omitted.” When I looked at his test book, I saw that he circled the correct answer for that question, which was not particularly difficult. My guess is that he neglected to fully fill in the answer bubble for this question, so the scanner marked it as omitted. If he had filled in the bubble correctly, he would be a 222, which is a lock for NY. Now things are very much up in the air. We thought about trying to challenge the scoring, but I don’t know if that is an option for the PSAT. Even if it was, it probably wouldn’t do any good. If you neglect to completely fill in the bubble, it’s counted as a wrong answer even if it’s clear that you intended it to be your answer. Oh well.
@TheBigChef the omitted one was a question that the PSAT omitted for everyone. It may have been a “test” question or ambigous or whatever. I remember hearing about this or seeing it on my child’s test.
Yes, it was in the math section, It has nothing to do with not filling in the bubble correctly. Move on if he doesn’t make it. The NM is not that big of a deal - UNLESS you are looking for financial reasons like attending a school with major money. And, those are usually state schools - with a few exception. The top selective schools don’t care. It does NOT give an admissions boost in the upper selective colleges…I have gone through this before witih my kids and trust me, it is one test on one day. Colleges know this.
LvMyKids2 - Thanks for the info. If true, it would actually make me feel better. But in my son’s case, I think it really was an issue with filling in the bubble. Question #5 on the math without calculators section was marked U for unscorable on everyone’s test, including my son’s test. The question that was marked “omitted” on his test was question #7 on math without calculators. And he definitely was penalized for this. Every answer on his key was marked with a green check mark except except question #5, which was marked U and question #7, which was marked with a red X. No penalty for the U, but he had to be penalized for the omitted question because he scored 750/760 on the math section.
Also, while NM would be nice, we aren’t stressing over this - nothing we can do about it at this point anyway. Agree that colleges don’t care about NM, especially since it can vary so much from state to state, and we don’t need it for financial reasons. In any event, thanks for the advice.
Question #5 on “Math without Calc” was not marked U - Unscorable on my son’s test. He had nothing marked U.
@sunnyschool different PSAT dates. Different books, different tests. there is a wednesday test date, saturday and then maybe alternate
This was for the PSAT exam given on Saturday, October 14, 2017. And question #5 was definitely thrown out as unscorable. I’m looking at the scoring report right now.
Semifinalist announcements mailed to schools today. We should know the cutoff soon.
Art (compassprep) will update the info
Don’t forget to post here as well! Good luck everyone!
Sitting on a 221 in New York so I’m anxious to hear whether it goes up or not.
The recent comments on Art’s blog are interesting. He seems to suggest that it’s possible a couple of states might go down. Not sure whether he’s basing that on strict probabilities and historical precedent, or whether he has particular insight from clients or GC’s in those states. TX as a possible decrease has come up a few times, for instance. Worth pointing out that the likelihood of NOT decreasing is probably significantly higher!
It would not be surprising if a few cutoffs went down, considering that the 2017 PSAT seemed anecdotally more difficult than 2016 for some kids who took both, while the scaling was identical or a point harsher for 2017 (comparing the scales for the first Wednesday test dates).
@JBStillFlying - yes, I have picked up on the same thing from Art’s blog. After waiting so long to hear, it is funny how the last few days are dragging by! S19 will most likely only apply to 5 schools - 3 of them with major NMF packages so it will have a huge impact on our family if it comes through.
When one says the NMSF were mailed out - does that mean snail mail OR email?
This thread brings me back to when I obsessed over receiving the official word for NMSF status of my first two kids. Good luck to all those who are on the cutoff edge!
Sadly - Sydney Snail.