<p>This is by no means a rant/complain thread, but a thought just came up.</p>
<p>What exactly does a high PSAT guarantee besides the National Merit scholarship?</p>
<p>I think the PSAT has a very limited effect on highly selective summer programs (RSI and TASP, I was rejected from both with a PSAT of 238) -- and other than that, what exactly does a high PSAT mark offer? It seems to me that there would be little point in people stressing over their PSAT scores because it is not going to make a big difference in the future anyway.</p>
<p>I never did study for or stress out about the PSAT and my mark did come as somewhat of a surprise; but after being through more of Junior year, I realize that there is little point in people stressing out about their PSAT scores during frosh/soph years.</p>
<p>My daughter didn't do well on the math portion in practice tests that a usefully high score was likely. So she just skipped the PSAT altogether. (Skipped the SAT too -- liked and performed better on the ACT) She's at her dream Ivy, so I don't think the absence of a PSAT score negatively impacted her.</p>
<p>She went to a summer program after 9th grade, so they weren't expecting a PSAT score. Then after 10th grade, she got in again because she had been successful the previous year.</p>
<p>the reason people stress about psat scores is that they are usually an accurate indicator of the range your real sat scores will be in...thus people consider them important because if you end up with low scores it indicates you likely have a lot of work to do to get your scores up...</p>