PSAT Scores for Sophomore

Test Preparation
1

<p>I'm a sophomore, and I just received my scores from the October PSAT.</p>

<p>Scores:
Math: 71 (99th percentile)
Critical Reading: 64 (97th percentile)
Writing: 58 (91st percentile)... ouch
Total: 193</p>

<p>I improved from a 140ish (freshman) to a 193 (sophomore). I did very poorly on the Writing because by the end of the test I was spent. I have very high anxiety, and I slept only around 6 hours before, worrying that I would choke and do terribly. Well... I guess I kinda did choke at the end.</p>

<p>Anyway, I have a few questions: How much should I expect to improve from now until I take the Junior year PSAT in 1 year, and the actual SAT in 1 1/2 years? How good is this score at a national level? Am I on course for National Merit?</p>

<p>I was one of the highest in my class of roughly 700 people. I only saw one person who did better than me, and I saw everyone's score in 2/6 English classes. Of course our school has more classes than that, but those are the only people that would be close to beating me out. Those 6 classes would be the AP/Gifted classes. My teacher beamed at me when she handed the scores to me, and after class she told me I was certainly in the running for National Merit.</p>

<p>I want some unbiased opinions here. Be honest, but not a jerk.</p>

2

<p>You’re definitely in good standing for NM next year. I scored substantially less than you my sophomore year (179) and brought that up to a 228 this year. You’re in luck because writing is the easiest section to improve upon. The SAT score you get will be around the same as your PSAT score of your junior year, but there are definitely exceptions. You should be very proud of yourself! Great job on your outstanding score, especially on the math section.</p>

3

<p>Really? I’m glad to hear that. Nice improvement by you, by the way. My score went way up from my Freshman year to my Sophomore year. I was kind enough to let my teachers believe that it was all because of their brilliant teaching. Well, partially. It was because of the help I got this year, and because I didn’t know the test was timed my Freshman year… I only answered around 1/2 the questions. </p>

<p>What’s the best way to study? At first I didn’t care too much about National Merit, but now I really want to get it. I have this PSAT book from my school, and I’m going to try to do every problem in the book from now until Junior year. Anything else to enhance my lackluster scores?</p>

4

<p>A score of 193 is not enough for national merit (which you know) but it is definitely not a bad score, and probably very high among most high schools.
How much you expect to improve from now until junior year depends on many factors, the most important being how hard you study and prep. I would start with vocab first, as that is the most difficult.
For my scores, I went from 180s to 204 to 233; what I did was start studying vocab 2 months before the 2013 test, but crammed 1 or 2 weeks right before the exam by taking a compilation of practice sat and psat tests and doing them; I think I may have done about 10 tests before the actual psat in those days.
There is a lot of info online on CB for improving scores (and CB is pretty good; you should get their “bluebook” prep as well). With a 190+ score, you are definitely in good shape to get NM qualification next year.</p>

5

<p>Hey, usamo. I realize that 193 is not national merit, but, like you said, I’m just a junior. I have an entire year of practice for my next test. In my school I was number #2 or #3 out of 650 sophomores. The highest was slightly over 200.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>I have the bluebook, but I’ve only done 3-4 tests in it. In the next year my goal is to do every single test in there.</p></li>
<li><p>Is there a website to practice words that are common on the SAT? </p></li>
<li><p>Why is it that I’m at the 96th percentile vs Sophomores? It only gave me vs. Juniors, but I did the math. 91 percentile for writing + 99 for math + 97 for writing all over 3 is about 96th percentile, yet I was in the top 5 compared to 650 students. My school isn’t dumb, either. Our school is ranked one of the highest in the country. Is that statistic slanted, or is there something I’m not realizing?</p></li>
</ol>

<p>Thanks</p>

6

<p>Errr, sorry. I mean to say “I’m just a sophomore”, not “I’m just a junior”.</p>

7

<p>Anyone have an answer on the percentile and where to study vocabulary?</p>

8

<p>My scores went up from sophomore to junior year by 20 points and I qualified for the NMSQT, and I didn’t study at all in between. I think it is natural for your score to go up by a bit (10-20 points I hear) because of your increased knowledge from school. But take the safe route and study! Don’t do what I did :)</p>

9

<p>It is definitely possible to improve your test scores. I went from 181 soph. to 221 this year (KS = nmsf woo!).
@Fivefour

  1. I don’t have any experience w/ blue book. I used an old PR-ten test book sitting around and did 7 of them. Always ask yourself why you’re missing X kind of question. Do you suck at algebra? Is it hard to interpret meaning? Are you grammatically inept? What was your thinking behind answer Y? If you see a general trend in practice, find some good study materials and get cracking.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>imo (and take it with a grain of salt) the best way to practice vocab is through taking tests. You’ll see a plethora of good words common on the SAT in your practice. Keep a dictionary handy and be ready to look up any words that stump you. I prefer a physical one since you get 14 definitions and all the words around it to look at (anyone else enjoy reading dictionaries?). Another great way to improve your vocab is through reading “good” literature. I learned 200+ words from Jane Eyre alone T__T lol</p></li>
<li><p>The numbers would indicate that a lot of students did VERY low on the writing portion of the PSAT. 58 => 91% means if you had 99 other students in a line, you would be in the top ten. Comparatively, 99% in math and 97% in reading are very good scores and would place you in first/second/third in the line. So averaging it out you’d be about 5th/6th right? At my school (public high ranked) many sophomores were taken by surprise by the PSAT. Students didn’t think to study for it perhaps? Either way, 194 is a good score for soph. with enough preparation, you’ll make any cutoff next year.</p></li>
</ol>

10

<p>My daughter is a sophomore, and she just received her scores today> </p>

<p>Math 64 (96th percentile)
CR: 57 (89%ile)
W:65 (98%cile)
Total: 186</p>

<p>Judging from what I read on CC, I guess 186 is not an outstanding, nor is it a bad score for a sophomore. </p>

<p>Looking forward, I know she needs to improve in every area, specifically her CR. Her vocab is weak. I was asking the same thing. Is there a website to practice words that are common on the SAT? I have all the good vocab books, but she simply does not like to learn them. You can take the horse to a river, but you can’t force it to drink. She knows vocab is important. but she does not take it seriously. Any way to motivate her?
I will definitely get books by Jane Eyre. Any other classical books? Please make a list, I will get them from our library.</p>

11

<p>@FiveFour: </p>

<p>Ok, so I feel that a 193 at sophomore year can easily make National Merit in Junior year, but it requires some dedication. I went from a 189-203-221. I mean those are pretty decent jumps in scores, but there is something </p>

<p>I want you to notice: My CR went from a 48-63-69. I mean in my freshman year, I was like close to national avg on CR… The way I improved was not just by taking tests. I looked through every test I did and got the meanings of all words I didn’t know and memorize the meanings. Sentence Completions can make a huge difference in your scores, for if you know the meanings of words, it gets answers fast and correct and saves you time on the reading qs. I mean do this and you will get all SCs right/only miss one at max.</p>

<p>First, I would say - improve your math. It is really simple, because math is not that hard. If you have taken algebra I and geometry - which I hope you have already - then it is going to be a piece of cake. The only danger is making those silly mistakes that drop your scores. I can say that the 71 is not b/c you didn’t know how to do the math - it is probably b/c you ran out of time (which means you should take more tests) or that you made an arithmetic error (still, practice more for perfection).</p>

<p>Writing is your lowest score and as people in this thread have already told, Writing is one of the easiest scores to improve, for they are basically the same rules over and over again. The questions are so similar that when you take like 10 practice tests, in the 11th one, all the questions looked so familiar - the types of them. Starting from then on, I started to get >700 on WR. </p>

<p>You have a lot of time. It is all about how you utilize it. I got my scores up 18 points in 2 months (summer) so I think given a whole year, you have a really good shot at National merit.</p>

<p>And my sole advice: PRACTICE ONLY WITH BLUE BOOK. I have noticed that other practice books are not as high in terms of quality or standards of the test questions compared to CB - obviously b/c CB is the one that writes the test. Especially writing and reading - do them out of the Blue book. I will say that some prefer Kaplan or Barron’s but in my experience, BB works the best. </p>

<p>If you have the time, look for the 10 REAL SATs Book by CB. This is the old version of the SAT. For reading, practice out of this, b/c it is a harder version of CR. They are harder, b/c it is more difficult to understand the passages. Try them out and you will see higher scores on the Blue Book. I don’t want this to demotivate you in CR, because I mean I got lower scores on the 10 REAL SAT’s CR. Do only the CR, btw. It helps a lot. </p>

<p>Other than that, I have nothing much to say. You have a pretty good shot, so don’t worry about it - just practice.</p>

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<p>McPanner:</p>

<p>Thanks for your constructive prep ideas. Although you wrote to FiveFour, they work for my daughter too.</p>

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<p>Lol… my score varied quite a bit from Freshman to Junior Year… 207, 219, 209.</p>

14

<p>Sorry, I missed all these nice messages. I was gone for one day and I got a ton of replies.</p>

<p>@anniesunshine - I hope the same happens with me. My score went up from 150 to 193 in one year… 193 to 220 is surely obtainable.</p>

<p>@zerdang 2. That’s a good idea. I’ll try that. 3. I was second out of 650 sophomores. So… Not sure what the deal is there.</p>

<p>@wuwenhan A lot of students at my school were in that 180’s range - not many broke through the 190’s, and certainly not the 200’s. Overall, vocab is one thing that you just have to study hard. I’m not sure on motivation, though. I’m not doing well because I care about getting scholarships or getting into an ivy league. I just want to prove to myself that I can do it. Kinda ignorant of me, I guess. Also, I wouldn’t compare your daughter to the people on here. For one, 9/10 of them are Juniors. Secondly, these people posting on here are generally the best of the best.</p>

<p>@McPanneer I’m currently in Pre-calc (the highest math class I could possibly take at my High School). I’ve done both so far, of course. My errors did, actually, come from me rushing. I looked through them all and I know how to do almost every question. I didn’t make too many blatant errors.</p>

<p>With writing, I feel like I’ll improve best if I just do a lot of tests. Like you said, all of it is just the same stuff. My worst part of that section was at the very end where you “delete sentence x to make paragraph y flow better”. That’s most likely because I have no experience with those style of questions. </p>

<p>Thanks for all the help, guys. </p>

<p>I remember back in Freshman year, my English teacher told my gifted english class: “All of you are National Merit scholars”. This made me optimistic about the future, but it also worried me. I thought: “look at all the competition!” But at the same time, I thought “I’m better than most of these guys…”</p>

<p>A year later, a few days ago from today, my current English teacher spoke to me after class and said that’s wrong. 19/20 of the people in that class won’t get national merit. In essence, she said I was the 1/20. I’m feeling confident that, with hard work, I can be a national merit finalist. </p>

<p>Again, thanks for all the help :)</p>

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<p>Anybody take the PSAT freshman year? My son took it and got a 197, which I think is probably a good start. Alas, they’re changing the PSAT the year he takes it…</p>

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<p>FiveFour, I’ll tell you my story in the hopes that it helps you understand that you are on the right track for sure.</p>

<p>Overall, I feel like everyone improves at the skills needed to succeed at standardized testing almost naturally, due to a combination of critical thinking improvement, maturation, and English classes that force students to think at higher levels. </p>

<p>I first took the SAT at the beginning of 8th grade (three years ago) as mostly a practice run since the scores wouldn’t count in middle school, so I could see where I was at, ending up with an 1830 overall. I then took the PSAT two years ago as a freshman without any prep whatsoever and received a 204. I didn’t study at all for it my sophomore year and my score jumped up to a 216. I think this definitely speaks volumes to the way that natural progression in logic/critical thinking can improve skills for these sorts of tests.</p>

<p>I took SAT practice tests (proctored and everything) this summer and I was still at around 2150 for most of the tests, disregarding outliers. I grew really worried and posted on these forums (check it out!) Then, I did a teeny bit of tutoring and TONS of practice and my score finally went up to a 232 for my junior year PSAT. </p>

<p>One of my friends scored a 190-something last year as a sophomore, but her score went up to a 228 this year. I think another major part of that is that she wasn’t ever the type of person to stress hard over something. </p>

<p>Relax, work hard, and everything will come to you. Good luck FiveFour! Feel free to PM if you want any additional details!</p>

17

<p>Can someone please explain what the BLUE BOOK for PSAT prep is exactly? Just the color blue or is that what it is called? I would like to get it for my daughter for prep for next year.</p>

<p>Thanks.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0874478529[/url]”>http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0874478529&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>This wonderful specimen linked above comes with 10 full length practice tests and loads of tips. It is a PSAT essential for sure! You can also get it on the collegeboard website for a few dollars more if you don’t like Amazon :)</p>

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<p>Thank you…</p>

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<p>@charlucas - yes my freshman took it but his school isn’t giving them out until after xmas break. 197 is a good score for a freshman . I’m not sure if the PSAT changes for them will be good or bad but I’m going to make sure my freshman takes the SAT in the fall of his junior year because the SAT is changing in the spring of junior year 2016 and for all I know it could turn into a disaster. I don’t want him being ones of the guinea pigs.:)</p>