According to the TASP website, literally anyone can apply for admission. So it seems that worrying over whether or not you got an invitation is silly.
“Who knows what criteria TASP used?”
I agree completely. Since no one knows the criteria, the TASP invitations are meaningless.
I don’t really want to go down this rabbit hole, but I will point out that in my experience sending newsletters to adults, they are not consistently good at being able to search their spam folders. Sometimes they will insist that they aren’t receiving something until I give them specific instructions for how to search the spam folders for their particular mail client.
CB has done a lot of stuff I don’t like this year, but I don’t think this is one of them. And, even if they did give this year’s PSAT scores to Telluride a month early, I wouldn’t particularly care. DS has his scores now, and NMSF has always been a waiting game stretched out over more than a year.
(And, my PSAT was pretty darn high in 1981, thank you very much.)
They are advertisements not awards. I don’t know why you want to read so much into this. It is not some kind of Mini-National Merit award. The paper letter my daughter received from them went into the same box as 1000 other college spams.
My understanding is that TASP has a tradition of alum participation. If you care so much about this, why don’t you ask them yourself instead of ranting on a forum.
Yes and insulting the parents on this thread also reflects poorly on you personally and on TASP if you are indeed an alum. NM corporate scholar here.
My goal on CC is to help students and parents. So when a thread goes down a silly rabbit hole that means nothing regarding admission to the TASP program, I am going to point that out. That mailing is a marketing mailing for TASP. They are trying to drum up
applications. If you aren’t on the mailing list but put together a quality application, your odds are every bit as good as someone who got the letter. How are you going to react when you start getting college spam? Can’t imagine…
My son took the PSAT (new format) in Oct 2015 and only received his scores yesterday. What is TASP about and what is this about receiving invitations? He received a score of 1430/1520 (not sure what the breakdown was) - but was he supposed to have 'received the ‘TASP invitation’
Don’t worry about the TASP invitation. Look at the TASP website with your son. If you’re interested, apply. If not, don’t.
Pl ignore that comment. Looking at the website now.
It is a highly-regarded program in the humanities. Admissions are mainly based on essays and if selected based on the essays performance in an interview. Scores are not a big part of admission, but good essay writers do also tend to be high scoring students.
I would love to believe all the conspiracies, find the evidences for college board’s wrongdoings and have them held accountable but I don’t see how.
Even now CB are using all their money collected from millions of children and armwrestling to make new SAT the mandatory graduation requirement for juniors in many states,Grrrrrrrrrrr.
Well your comment is true I disagree with your assumption. When a person (in this case the OP) has put together a fairly in-depth analysis and has people posting misrepresentations along with aggressive and sarcastic comments because they don’t like the message, it is not necessarily an insult to ask them to be more careful in reading the OP.
Why are so many people trying to silence this argument? I have seen some rational opposition, but much of it seems way over the top to me.
CB says that it does not release individual scores does disseminate less specific information. So I am going to speculate that CB reports cohorts in percentile terms only. There was a fairly wide SI spread that has fallen in the 99th percentile for the 2015 test. So TASP may go out to everybody in the 99% percentile for 2014 or to everybody that is in striking range of commended scholar and up (98-99%)
I asked my daughter if she had gotten an email invite from TASP. “Huh?” Telluride Seminar? “I have no idea.” She puts all her college spam emails in a separate folder so she went back and checked and there it was.
I think that the earlier speculation that TASP used 2014 PSAT data because the CB delayed release of the scores is probably correct. Additionally, students self report all sorts of other information about their GPA, coursework, etc that may factor into these invites and may explain how invites are calculated.
In my daughter’s case, her SI went up by 3 points. Last year, as a sophomore, she would have missed our state’s cutoff by 3 points. This year she might have a shot at NMS, she might not, depends what the new state cutoff is and that’s anybody’s guess. I don’t believe that the TASP invite, or Stanford and Brown summer program invites, are NMS crystal balls in her case, or anybody else’s.
What’s most important, IMO, is evaluating the results of the PSAT, figuring out if, where, and how there might be room for improvement, and applying those lessons to the SAT, which is really what matters for admissions.
You don’t need an invite to apply for TASP and you don’t need to be NMS to get into Harvard. So for all of those that are fretting, stop, go out and celebrate that you’re among the top 1% in the nation, and go out and celebrate. It will all work out in the end.
CB does say on the website that they release individual scores to NMSC and TASP.
I think this thread is completely valid and whoever doesn’t want to participate, feel free to ignore the thread.
My son did not take the PSAT in 2014, but did check the box “no emails” (per my direction). So we haven’t gotten any mailings.
My PSAT score was well over the 99th percentile in 1974 when I took the test and received a TASP invitation. But that was a long time ago. Clearly, things have changed a lot at Telluride since the old days.
Contrary to @mathyone and @mnpapa29, I don’t think there is definitive proof about what the criteria were, or whether CB and TA told the truth.
If there was a cutoff of 170 or 180, then tens of thousands of invitations went to spam. If TA used a special geo-ethno-socioeconomic-PSAT algorithm, so that some people with 170 got invitations and others with 230 did not, then that’s not the TASP I remember as stocked only with people who cleared NMSF easily.
I don’t know whether CB told the truth about when it sent out the 2015 scores, but if it didn’t, I don’t think that should be passed over so lightly.
It’s good that you and your son were not negatively impacted by the PSAT score delay. Other students were. The PSAT is not just about NMSF. My juniors expected to have their booklets in hand to study over the holidays. The guidance counselor usually distributed the booklets by December 10 or 12. That didn’t happen this year, when the booklets would have been especially helpful. Now the students are busy with school work and the guidance counselor is busy with senior applications. The juniors won’t get their booklets until end of January.
Thank you for your kind words. I did not start this thread to criticize or insult any students or parents, but to air some issues for people who might be interested. However, since some people for some reason decided to launch very nasty and gratuitous attacks, I decided to defend myself.
My bad; I was looking under Student Search where it says:
The search criteria can include any attribute from the SDQ, EXCEPT THE FOLLOWING: disability, parental education, self-reported parental income, social security number, phone numbers and ACTUAL TEST SCORES.
The most searched items are expected high school graduation date, cumulative GPA and intended college major. A full list of SDQ questions is available in College Board test registration materials
However, here, it says that the scores go to Telluride:
https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/psat-nmsqt-psat-10/scores/who-receives-scores
Sorry for the error!
I just honestly can’t see why this matters? So what if TASP did get the scores before students did? PSAT score distribution has always been varied – my kids’ school (and one of my kids did get the TASP invite a few years ago) didn’t give the PSAT scores out until after winter break. It is acknowledged that TASP gets the scores. I don’t see the point of this thread – can someone explain why this matters?
Let’s say you went to see a doctor and he/she did a bunch of tests.
They said come back in 2 weeks for the results.
Meanwhile the doctor sends your medical information to pharmacies and other commercial entities that potentially can help you get better.
Before you find out if you have any diseases or not, you are getting fanmails and stuff about discounted prescription medicines, weight loss programs, healthy food recipes, retirement home recommendations, financial advisors, and discounted cemetery lot offers…
Exaggerated example but… it will happen sooner or later with facebook et al…
You cannot opt out of score forwarding to Telluride just by checking a box. The box is to opt out of Student Search Service. Telluride is not part of Student Search Service. To opt out of score forwarding to Telluride, the student has to send a snail-mail letter to a P.O. Box in Princeton (probably ETS) by October 31.
"Other Programs
PSAT/NMSQT scores are automatically sent to these scholarship and recognition programs:
National Hispanic Recognition Program
National Scholarship Service
Telluride Seminar Scholarships
Learn more about these programs. If you don’t want your scores released to these organizations, write to the PSAT/NMSQT program by Oct. 31 at this address:
P.O. Box 6720
Princeton, NJ 08541-6720"
Of course it is possible, as has been insinuated, that I never attended TASP.
If you want to find out if a person attended TASP, ask the following question:
“What Latin word is used at TASP to designate a counselor?”
Answer:
Factotum
I attended the 1975 seminar “The Ancient Art of Subversive Writing,” run by the Cornell classicist Fred Ahl. We read loads of Greek and Roman literature, drama, and poetry in translation. Ahl presented his theory that the Aeneid is actually a hidden criticism by Virgil of Augustus. The other professor, a classicist from the University of Texas at Austin, thought Ahl’s theory was bunk. They argued endlessly about translations. Many of the arguments were in Greek or Latin so they were difficult to follow. The best part was that I got a smattering of classical education beyond what was offered in my high school. It looks like the program is completely different now.
I did write a couple of emails to Telluride in December inquiring whether TA had the 2015 PSAT scores, but I haven’t received any answer.
I didn’t get the TASP Email and I got 1500(760 Math, 740 Verbal) and SI of 224 and I got a 209 last year so TASP might only send to certain geographic areas or something along those lines.