<p>my son got a 234 this year (junior) on his PSAT. Is that a score that will get him into the finals?</p>
<p>S1 Got a 230 last year. That will definitely get you into the Semi-finals. IIRC, the highest cutoff was something like 223. After that, the PSAT score does not matter. The SAT has to be in the ball park (most posts say around 1960 or so?) Grades have to be in line (no more than 1 ‘C’) and recommendations from administration/faculty need to be positive. Since only about 1500 out of 16500 semi-finalists do not make finalist, your son has a great chance. Good luck. We have found it to be a wild ride. The hardest part now is the waiting…you will not know until September ‘officially’ that he is a NMSF.</p>
<p>I would assume he should be fine. He’s ranked #1 in his class, tons of AP’s, 5’s on all his exams so far and did way over 1960 on SAT and ACT did very well too. Thanks for the info. I just want to know I can cross that off my “worry” list-haha!</p>
<p>ZBD…Sounds like he’s all set for now. Has his school had NMSFs in the past? Are they familiar with the process for getting the Finalist package submitted? There is a student portion (submitting the SAT score to NMSC using code #0085 IIRC, short essay) and a school portion (letter of recommendation, official transcript) that is done through an online portal. You can submit his SAT score anytime you’d like. When the school receives his NMSF notification letter in September, it will contain log-in information for your S to accomplish his portion. Many schools aren’t familiar with the process and aren’t really looking for the SF notification letters when they arrive, so that can delay the process…and unfortunately sometimes lead to the student not making Finalist status.</p>
<p>If his HS knows what they’re doing it should go smoothly. If they’re not familiar with the process, you may want to read through the FAQ thread and learn as much as you can so you can “guide” them along.</p>
<p>Just to add a note regarding Wolverine86’s comment regarding High Schools’ knowing what they are doing …</p>
<p>Be sure to read the schedule for the Class of 2015 competition at the NMSC web site and note the date when it says NMSC will publicly release semifinalist results nationwide. NMSC will have already released results confidentially via a mailed package to school administration a week or more in advance. In that confidential release, each student that has made the cut has a letter that is dated. The schools are told expressly that they can notify these students privately and share that letter with them and their family, but are to make no public announcement until after the release date.</p>
<p>So, given the public release date and knowing that your school has the information in-hand in advance, if you haven’t heard anything the week before, call them and press. They are sometimes confused about this. Further, if you’ve had no success and the public release date has come, call NMSC and ask for verification for your student. They will do so (did for me). It is important to then start the paperwork with the school and get into the NMSC web portal to get everything documented for the finalist competition. There is an early October date to have all of this in order, so your student and the school have approx 4 weeks to do so.</p>
<p>A score of 234 will most certainly get you finalist status. Just make sure SAT=>2000, and actually submit semifinalist application (about one year after taking PSAT).</p>
<p>Thanks everyone! our school is a little slow on guidance stuff, so this will help us a lot to stay on track.
this has been a great site,so glad we found it. </p>