Back in the olden days (1978), when I took the PSAT, the scoring made sense. Each section was scored 20-80 and you could easily figure out an SAT equivalent by adding a zero. My 10th grader is taking the PSAT tomorrow and that’s obviously meaningless, so at this point I’m just abstractly curious, but what’s with the 160-760 scale? What was wrong with the old direct equivalent?
I think the reasoning is what you score on the PSAT would concord directly to what you would score on the SAT. Since the PSAT is easier the scale is lower. So for example if you score 1400 on the PSAT you would expect to score a 1400 on the SAT at that moment.