<p>My younger brother, who happens to be in tenth grade recently took the PSAT. He scored an almost perfect score in the math and verbal section. In fact he scored the highest overall amongst his grade. </p>
<p>"Your Percentile is 82% - (compares your performance with college bound JUNIORS) <strong><em>note he is only a sophomore</em></strong></p>
<p>Anyway lately his e-mail box has been flooded with mail from Brown, Duke, and Swarthmore. What does this mean? Is he Brown material? And how did they even know that he was interested in them? Personally, I can never recall getting an e-mail let alone a response of some sort from an ivy.</p>
<p>Colleges try to identify academic talent from PSAT scores,and then send marketing material to the high scorers in an effort to get the student to apply . What were the "almst perfect" PSAT scores? I got an "almst perfect" spelling score once.</p>
<p>Colleges get the info from Collegeboard. It doesn't really mean much. They send these out to almost everyone who gets more than 210 on the PSAT or 2100 on the SAT. My inbox is full of this stuff.</p>
<p>Garrity are you implying that I can't spell the word "almost" correctly? If so, I did. </p>
<p>My brother does not study at all. He is a sophomore and they compared him with junior PSAT test takers in America that is how they came up with the 82% percent. Obivously if he was to be ranked with his fellow 10th graders then the percentile would have been calculated in the mid 90% (as implied by his high school counselor). He scored a 2110/2400 on the SAT.</p>
<p>210 on the PSAT is outstanding. National Merit Commended scholar is at 202 or 203. Some states Nat'l Merit finalist begin at 204. So if your brother got a 210 or above,he may be a viable candidate for any of these schools. That being stated, 82% is not a particularly high score. A 210 would be top1%, or 99%.</p>
<p>Kunfuzed: It was an attempt at injecting levity into the "conversation". 82% is not almost perfect by any definition. A sense of humor is a sign of maturity. I was trying to be humorous,sorry if my humor offended you.</p>
<p>as others have said, the mail means absolutely nothing. Top schools want to have lots of hi-scoring applicants applying so they can choose who they want. Getting these letters means no more than your parents getting another credit-card offer in the mail. The CEO of Citibank has not taken a personal interest in your parents and is not working to get them as a customer, no matter what the letter seems to say. Everyone knows that, but many 17-year-old kids don't understand how marketing like this works and get their hopes way up when they receive the college version of these letters.</p>
<p>It's kind of sad how colleges (actually the PR firms they hire to run the campaign) send letters saying things like "we look forward to receiving your application", "you'd be one of our top applicants", and so on to give the impression that they're a shoo-in.</p>
<p>And if it's just email they're being cheap! At least they should fork out the pennies to send a glossy letter ;)</p>
<p>I got in the 86th percentile, comparing against juniors (i'm a sophomore). Many of my friends were in the 90's. I do not understand why he would attract these schools when people who did better do not.</p>
<p>ya. in soph year i got 91 percentile compared with jrs and didnt mail from those schools. tho my math score was nowhere near perfect so maybe htats what it is.</p>
<p>82 percentile for a somphomore is not considered very high at all. I am not saying it is poor, or even that it is not quite an achivement, but it is not rare. 82 as a somphomore would have been considered pretty low for my class. Those Ivy letters do not have to do with getting 82 as a somphomore.</p>
<p>wait that doesn't make sense....assuming you mean 750+ when you say "almost perfect", that should easily put his scores at 99th percentile. How are you getting 82?</p>
<p>2110 is good for a sophomore, but not amazing or anything. He should be in good shape to go for semifinalist next year (regardless of your state), and try to go for 2250+. Those letters colleges are just advertising themselves so you'll apply there. It's good that he's receiving them, but they certainly don't gaurantee an acceptance or anything.</p>
<p>I was in the 98th percentile of juniors nationwide when I was a sophomore and that was the highest score of anyone in my school, 10th or 11th grade. And my high school is not very competitive. </p>
<p>I'd like to know how the OP's brother got almost perfect reading and math scores but was only in the 82nd percentile. What were his actual scores?</p>
<p>A junior my school got a perfect score on the psat this year so yes juniors are doing good on the psat. (btw she is amazing and basically a genius)</p>
<p>The real thing is what matters. And these only take test score in to account. I know people with GPAs way out of MITs range that have gotten letters from them. It is advertisment and nothing more, they want to get their applications up.</p>