<p>Are the PSATs an accurate projection of what you are likely to score on the SATs? I ask because I recently took a practice PSAT by Kaplan and I am not satisfied with my score...at all. Nor am I satisfied with my practice SATs from Kaplan...are they just hard?? If not, I'm going to need a 470 point (or 47 ? for the PSAT) improvement to meet my goal...</p>
<p>My junior year PSAT score was 2070. My first SAT score was 2040. Pretty close, but by no means universal. Make of that what you will. :)</p>
<p>My first psat was like a 1490. My first sat was a 1710.</p>
<p>My PSAT and SAT differed by only 50 points. So its a good indicator normally. And BHadoC, were those in the same year?</p>
<p>It depends. My PSAT score was 200 points lower than my first SAT. So in my case, the PSAT wasn't incredibly accurate. A lot of my friends did better on the SAT than they did on the PSAT, and a few did worse.</p>
<p>Son's PSAT was 233 and first SAT was 2010.</p>
<p>Sophomore PSAT: 1640, Junior PSAT: 2040, SAT: 2050. So the Junior one was pretty accurate, I hope I did better on Sunday's though.</p>
<p>my junior psat score was 220 points lower than my first SAT score, and 300 points lower than my first ACT score converted. So in ma opinion, no.</p>
<p>Thanks you guys!</p>
<p>Can anybody address my other questions? About Kaplan?</p>
<p>The only reason I'm panicking is because I'm hoping for a 2150 and that, as shown by my practice tests, seems light years away. I am an all honors and AP student so I didn't think I'd score so poorly, considering I think they're rather simple. I'm hoping, and praying actually, that Kaplan is harder than the real things, giving me at least a bit of hope. 470 points is a lotttttttttttttttt of points to improve...</p>
<p>For me it was:</p>
<p>Sophomore Year PSAT: 186 (no studying)
Junior Year PSAT: 196 (no studying)
First SAT Practice Test: 2030 (mild studying)
Second SAT Practice Test: 2120 (more studying)
Official SAT: 2200 (a bit more studying)</p>
<p>honors and AP classes do not prep you for SAT, in fact i see no correlation. SAT is in my opinion a very poor indicator of how well u will do in college. "SAT" used to stand for student aptitude test. Now it doesn't mean anything...just the three most dreaded letters a high school student will here. So not only is the psat inaccurate, the whole thing itself is also inaccurate</p>
<p>Junior PSAT: 211
Best Junior SAT: 2160</p>
<p>Eh, close'ish.</p>
<p>Can anyone answer the KAPLAN question?</p>
<p>And omg I can't believe they are accurate ;[ I'm screwed...in the butthole.</p>
<p>I got the exact same score on my PSAT and SAT (first time). So yeah, they're usually pretty accurate, if you don't do any prep in between.</p>
<p>kh, my psat scores were during my sophomore year, and i took my SATs junior year. I also scored a 27 on my ACT. Just because you don't do so hot on the PSATs does not mean you will be a failure on your SATs or ACTs.</p>
<p>I don't think they are. I took the PSATs twice, and I basically failed them twice. First time I took the PSAT, i got a 57 on the writing, and second time, a 60. This prevented me from getting the easy National Merit Scholarship (qualifying score was really low this year). In contrast, if you converted my two SAT scores to PSAT, I would've qualified with those easily during the hard years.</p>
<p>One, there is no failing grade. Two, it's not easy to qualify for NMSF. Three, in what state? Qualifying scores don't usually vary by more that a point or two from year to year.</p>
<p>Myth...you're saying that it wasn't an accurate projection? in your case at least...</p>
<p>Almost everyone I know does better on the SAT than the PSAT. Because there are so few questions on the PSAT, the curve is much more harsh. (You'll see that from my personal experience; I missed the same number of questions on each of my PSATs and on my SAT but my score was much higher on the SAT.) PSATs do give you an idea of how you do on the sections relative to one another, though.</p>
<p>In addition, practice tests aren't necessarily representative of how you'll do on the real thing. My experience: </p>
<p>Sophomore year, I took a practice PSAT the night before my PSAT and got, like, 206.
The next day, I took the real PSAT and got a 234 (missed one question in each section.)</p>
<p>Junior year, I took a practice PSAT the night before my PSAT and got a 217 or something like that. Maybe 218.
The next day, I took the real PSAT and got a 230 (missed one question in each section.)</p>
<p>Two weeks later, I took the SAT and got a 2390 (missed three questions.)</p>
<p>Note that there was no studying for any of these (except for the SAT Questions of the Day for a few months before my junior year PSAT!) </p>
<p>Oh, and keep in mind that my practice PSATs were past PSATs that my school distributed to encourage us to practice. So they were REAL tests. The only difference was due to my mindset; when I was in the testing room, I really focused on trying to get every question right. Ya know? It's an attitude thing. When you're sitting at home practicing, you (or at least I...) don't have the mindset of "I am going to concentrate as hard as possible and own this thing." </p>
<p>Sooo uh, my point is, PSATs are generally sort of indicative of your strengths/weaknesses, but you aren't necessarily boxed in to what you get on your practice tests, unless you let yourself have a defeatist outlook about it. Again, it's all about the attitude. Go for the 100%.</p>
<p>ALSO, here are some sequences of some people that I know (10th grade PSAT, 11th grade PSAT, SAT):</p>
<p>206 --> 217 --> 2290.
176 --> 222 --> hasn't gotten his scores yet but is getting 2300+ on practices.</p>
<p>"when I was in the testing room, I really focused on trying to get every question right. Ya know? It's an attitude thing."</p>
<p>You are so right Poseur. When people start asking how many they can get wrong to get a 700 they've already lost half the battle.</p>