I see that my posts are still being misrepresented by mnpapa29.
I did not say in any of my posts on this thread that Telluride is lying.
I said EITHER it is lying OR it used used an algorithm for sending out TASP invitations that is very different from the algorithm that is used by NMSC. This would mean that a TASP invitation has little relation to NMSF status, and that Telluride is actively looking for students who score much lower on the PSAT than do NMSF candidates.
“If the top 1% has 20,000 people, it is 4 times less selective a group than the top 1% containing 5,000 people.” Huh? It means that there are 4x as many people taking the test. Either way your chance of getting in is 1 in 100.
@Plotinus You never cease to amaze me. You say EITHER Telluride is lying OR they used a funky algorithm to send out the invites. And then you write a bunch of posts suggesting that the latter is unlikely. You’re smart. What inferences would YOU draw from that? Whatever. We agree to disagree.
All those people who had 800, 790, 780, 770, 760, 750, 740, 730 in SAT Verbal before the curves were recentered were given 800 after the recentering. The 730’s got a 70 point bonus. The people who could score 800 without recentering got nothing. Elite universities could no longer distinguish between a real 800 and a 730 inflated to 800. There were suddenly many more people with really high verbal scores. But the number of places at elite universities did not increase.
Sigh. TASP isn’t looking for the same thing as NMF. They are seeking to get the word out to possible applicants to their program, and know that students with high PSAT scores may have the other qualities they are looking for. So they email to invite them to consider attending. The PSAT score does not determine admission like it does for NMF. Tempest in a teapot…
Idea for an “obscure” way of selecting who to send to from the 2014 scores – Maybe they just went with high writing or CR+W scores? I’d try that if I were them. Sophomores (and probably humanities-focused sophomores even more) tend to score lower on math, since many haven’t taken all the courses that cover PSAT math yet.
@intparent
TASP was never “determined” by PSAT scores in the sense that no level of PSAT scores was sufficient to guarantee admission to TASP. However, PSAT scores in the NMSF range used to be a necessary condition for invitation to apply.
@Ynotgo
Your idea that invitation was based on 2014 CR+W might make sense except that some students reporting invitations also reported exceptionally low 2014 W scores (in the 50’s, coupled with not so high CR scores).
For example, @fisisk reported PSAT 2014 CR60 M69 W52, and @SammieB reported overall low with W59.
I don’t know how Telluride used the section scores after the changeover from V+M to CR+M+W. I would have thought that either it would have used all three or CR+M, not CR+W. For example, @fisisk had CR+M 129 and @ChrispyChop had CR+M 128. Not many students reported their breakdowns, so it is hard to say.
@Ynotgo
(continued)
If we want to accept the hypothesis that Telluride used 2014 CR+M with a cutoff of around 128, we would still have to account for the many students with 2014 CR+M over 128 who did not receive TASP emailed invitations, and who could not find them even after looking for them in their spam.
Further, several people reported that the TASP emails were followed up by paper letters of invitation. If this is correct, then we would also have to say that many paper invitations were lost in the snail mail.
My DD1 got a 78 CR and 69 W in 2014 (she got an invitation), my DD2 got a 62 CR and 68 W in 2014 (she did not)
@Chembiodad Are your two daughters both juniors this year?
If so, what were their M scores in 2014? And their 2015 scores?
One hypothesis that crossed my mind is this: Telluride made a first list based on relatively high cut-off sophomore scorers of 2014 (say around 214, or CR+M 142). Then it looked at this list and determined that it needed more people of type A, B and C, from geographical regions D, E, and F. Then it looked at the 2015 scores, and picked out the A,B, C, D,E, F type/region people with high 2015 scores.
In this way, some of the invites would be based on 2014 scores, and some on 2015 scores.
This hypothesis would explain why among the people who got invites, those who have relatively low 2014 scores have relatively high 2015 scores. These would be the people who were picked in the second round on the basis of their high 2015 scores, not their low 2014 scores. It also would explain why many people with high 2015 scores did not get invites. For people who did not make the 2014 cutoff, only people fitting certain non-score criteria were selected based on 2015 scores.
However, this hypothesis is inconsistent with the CB and TA claims that the invitations were based on the 2014 scores only. If the hypothesis is correct, we could interpret the CB Tweet “TASP 2016 invites were sent out on the basis of sophomore 2014 PSAT scores” to mean “SOME of the invites were sent out on the basis of 2014 scores.”
The hypothesis fits a lot of the reported data, but not all. It is inconsistent, for example with @KrazyKing5461, who reports scoring 230 in 2014 and says he/she did not get an invitation.
Of course it is possible that TA used special non-score criteria in the first round and the list was generated using just 2014 scores and these special non-score criteria. But the criteria would have to have been really peculiar.
So I don’t really know what happened.
The GC at my D’s school recommended someone for TASP. I would imagine TASP would not send invites to the other students in the school that the GC did not recommend, even if they were high scorers. Does TASP send invites to lower scorers if nominated by the GC?
As much as I believe the CB released scores to their “customers” before the students, I do not think we know enough about TASP’s processes to prove it.
This “invitation to apply” is just a marketing email. That is all. Wonder if you worry if you stop getting a catalog mailed to you… it means the same.
Looking in the Telluride material, I found that program funding has recently been taken over by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, which is known for advocating for financially needed students.
https://www.applyweb.com/corntell/instruct.html
The TASP 2016 application reads:
"While TASP welcomes applications from high school juniors of all backgrounds, students from historically underrepresented groups—especially students of color and those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds—are particularly encouraged to apply.
Funding support for the Telluride Association’s Summer Programs was provided by the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation"
Also, the 2014-15 annual report
http://www.tellurideassociation.org/brochures/Annual_Report_2014-15.pdf
“Telluride’s free, prestigious college-level liberal arts seminars for
high school juniors (TASP) and sophomores (TASS) continue
to thrive. This year, Telluride greatly expanded its recruitment
efforts focusing on financially disadvantaged and historically
underserved students.”
I don’t know if that shows anything about whether the invitations are based on 2014 or 2015 scores, but it does say something about the non-score invitation selection criteria.
@Plotinus, Yes, twin Juniors - Sophomores at that time. Math scores of 69 and 70 so it wasn’t a factor. One got a 219 - 76, 74, 69 this year; don’t know other one yet.
That’s really interesting that you have twin daughters (as well as challenging), and one is +16 over the other in CR. I thought twins were supposed to score the same (and receive the same TASP invitations). Or are they fraternal twins? 
However, if the same twin is much higher also on the 2015 PSAT, I don’t think this would show much about which scores were used in their case. What happened to the 2015 scores for the second twin?
@Plotinus,
Identical twins. Both had same 34 single-sitting ACT composite, both scored 36 and 35 on ACT English and Reading subsections, so expect other DD’s PSAT CR will be higher this time as well - just haven’t seen her scores yet…
@Chembiodad
How would you account for the large difference in the twins’ CR scores in 2014? Was there a problem in the testing room? Or one girl had a cold?
In fact, it is a common joke among students that if you have an identical twin who is really smart, you can have him/her take the test for you. However, it’s a bad joke because identical twins usually have the same scoring profiles. 
No idea as verbal scores were identical on ACT