<p>Sophomore: 214
Junior: 232
What happened: a bit of practice, a little luck, and a lot of focus.</p>
<p>Fresh - 158 (Terrible.)
Soph - 181 (23 point jump!)
Junior - 199 (18 point jump)</p>
<p>Writing was always my Achilles heel.</p>
<p>My school always releases PSAT scores late, but anyways…</p>
<p>Fresh - 166
Soph - 188 </p>
<p>I improved 22 pts. Hopefully next year I’ll be able to improve more to make the NMS cutoff.</p>
<p>My daughter:</p>
<p>Fresh - 180
Soph - 211
Junior - ??? (Oct 2012)</p>
<p>Fresh to Soph improvement was just over halfway to the goal line (31/60)… Hopefully a similar improvement later this year (14 or 15/29 points) will get her Semifinalist status…</p>
<p>My D -
Fr - 186
So - 200
Jr - 216
SAT Nov 11 - 2065
ACT Dec 11 - 33 (which was really impressive because she tanked in math - 28 - because her calculator wouldn’t turn on, CR & W were perfect, science was strong)</p>
<p>CR went up to perfect, but math dropped a point (usually her strongest). D thinks it was because the math on the test is math from 9th & 10th and she hadn’t reviewed.</p>
<p>Freshman year-193 (690M 640Cr 610G)
Sophmore year-214 (770M, 730Cr, 640G)</p>
<p>Wow my grammar fails.</p>
<p>I’m a sophomore in Texas and got a 214, without studying. (with one erasing mistake causing 1 question to be “wrong” even though I got it right…). I took the SAT in 7th and got 1920, and then the SAT a few weeks after the PSAT and got a 2240 or 2260, I don’t remember which…
Some colleges offer amazing money for National Merit, so I’m really shooting for it. The cutoff here is usually around 219, so I’m really hoping to start studying now and to be able to get pretty much everything right consistently, just in case something goes wrong and I get some weird questions the day of the test. I figure nerves will catch up to me, and I’ll miss a few just because of stupidity. </p>
<p>Anyway, sorry to hijack this thread, but since it is “success stories”, I’d love to hear what you guys did to achieve that success. Vocab is probably my most consistent problem area (2 of 4 CR I missed were vocab), so especially resources you used to help with that would be good. Thanks in advance for any advice.</p>