<p>Does anyone know, or know where I can find out, the cutoffs for Natl Achievement in Texas? Aren't there two levels of cutoff, one to be a participant and one to be a finalist? Is that the correct terminology?</p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1549761-class-2014-national-achievement-qualifying-scores.html?highlight=national+achievement[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/african-american-students/1549761-class-2014-national-achievement-qualifying-scores.html?highlight=national+achievement</a></p>
<p>Look through this thread. There are lots of posters from Texas. The semifinalist cutoff seems to be about 200 this year for Texas, though it was not nailed down exactly when posts stopped. ‘Outstanding participant’ seems to be similar to ‘commended’ for national merit, so much lower.</p>
<p>I think the thing to do is call NMSC and ask for the national achievement office and ask them about it to get correct info.</p>
<p>Thanks for responding, celeste!</p>
<p>I called, and they won’t tell you. I get why they are secretive about the number, but it’s kind of ridiculous. If you’re going to have this program, you should be proud of it and stand behind the numbers. In fact, the person I spoke to even said that if you see a number published somewhere, they are not official.</p>
<p>If that thread is the one I read earlier, it seems that the number is between 198-202 for a finalist. I was hoping making a separate thread would help come up with a specific number.</p>
<p>Someone claimed to be just ‘outstanding participant’ with 199 later in that thread, so that would mean at least 200 cutoff, if info is taken to be credible.</p>
<p>When you call, if you pretend to be the parent of the student, they should at least tell you if that student is or is not a semifinalist. Especially since it’s well after the date that paperwork needs to be sent in. You could claim your school never gave you any info and ask for confirmation of the student’s status, since if semifinalist, would like to pursue finalist and you are worried the school lost the info. They won’t release cutoff scores, but they have to give you info about a particular student, or at the very least agree to mail to student’s home address if they have privacy concerns.</p>
<p>LOL! So I should lie!</p>
<p>Anyone wanna call and pretend to be my friend? The first person can take 200, and we can work up from there! ;)</p>
<p>FFS have your friend call…</p>
<p>The deal is this is for a friend with a 2015 grad, and I’m just trying to get her the 2014 cutoff so she’d have a reference point for when she gets her dd’s PSAT score next month. I didn’t think it would be such a state secret!</p>
<p>It’s a lot easier for National Merit because so many kids take the test and it’s been around for a long time. People have been tracking and keeping records of all the individual state cutoffs for years and years. No thanks to NMSC. They would like it to be secret. </p>
<p>The cutoff scores for NMSF were record high for last year’s PSAT in many states. If it turns out that 200 is the cutoff for NASF in Texas, that would probably be the very highest your friend needs to be looking at for this year’s PSAT.</p>
<p>Yeah, I looked up all the numbers for 2014 and was shocked how everything’s gone up. Commended at 203? Wow. And a 219 in Texas for NMSF? Interestingly, the Hispanic number for Texas was still in the 180s.</p>
<p>According to this post <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/16364799-post1257.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/16364799-post1257.html</a> the NA qualifying score in TX was <= 196. I believe so far that’s the most accurate information we have in this forum.</p>
<p>If you read the National Achievement thread I linked above, where that same poster from IA with the 196 score also posts, you’ll see that others, in Texas, with higher scores only made ‘outstanding participant’ Then someone called NMSC to get clarification and was told that while the number of NASF is set by region, within a region different states have different cutoffs. Who knew? The arcane ways of the NMSC…</p>
<p>Hmmm…bizarre but not unexpected. Thanks for the clarification.</p>