<p>Hi!</p>
<p>My daughter is going to a sophomore in high school next year. According to her school's Guidance Counselor, students typically take the PSAT in the first half of their Junior year. That seems awfully late to me. When do your children take their first PSAT? What are the advantages (if any) of waiting til Jr Year? Would you recommend having her take it sooner?</p>
<p>Thank you!
Leeann</p>
<p>My older two took them at the end of sophomore year in HS - as a practice run, and again in the fall of Junior year.</p>
<p>The PSAT is given by your high school - so you really don’t have any options to take it at other times. It is always in mid-October. Some high schools give it 9th, 10th and 11th - some do 10th and 11th - and I guess some do only 11th if that’s what your hs does. Keep in mind the PSAT serves 2 functions - it is a practice test for the SAT and it is the qualifying test for National Merit. If you are concerned that your hs only offers it junior year - my suggestion would be to purchase a PSAT or SAT practice book and have her do a few practice tests on your own. You might want to purchase an ACT practice book as well and have her try an ACT practice test as well.</p>
<p>Most students take the real SAT and ACT during their junior year of hs - and you can also take it in the fall of senior year - although personally - I think it is better if you can have this step done by the end of junior year.</p>
<p>My kids took it 9th,10th,11th grades but only because that’s how the school did it and there was no cost to us.</p>
<p>It is also my understanding that, in order to qualify for NM, the PSAT must be taken in the junior yr.
My S took PSAT as 9th graders through 11th gr. The cost was under $20 if I remember correctly.</p>
<p>Right - the PSAT taken in October of junior year is used for National Merit. In April of junior year, your student will receive a letter if they made the first cut - this indicates that they are at least a commended student. In September of senior year - another letter - indicating if they made the next cut to be a semi-finalist.</p>
<p>From the PSAT website: “The 2010 PSAT/NMSQT test dates are Wednesday, October 13 and Saturday, October 16. You must sign up for the PSAT/NMSQT at your high school or at another high school in your community. This test is administered by high schools, not through test centers. Online registration for the PSAT/NMSQT is not available. Please note that each high school chooses only one October test date.”</p>
<p>If your school is holding on Wednesday and for Juniors only, it may be difficult for your daughter to take a trial run her sophomore year. You could try surrounding schools and see if any of them are offering the Saturday test.<br>
There would be two good reasons for giving it a try as a sophomore - if you daughter is good at standardized tests and may do well enough as a Junior to qualify for National Merit commended or semi-finalist status, then taking it once ahead of time can be of benefit; or if your daughter has testing problems/anxiety and she needs more familiarity with taking that kind of test under “real” conditions instead of just practice tests at home.</p>
<p>If you know from your child’s testing history, that he/she is not likely to score well enough on the PSAT to qualify for National Merit Semi-Finalist status (in most states this will be at least 200 on the junior year exam), and he/she is not one of the minorities served by the National Achievement and National Hispanic scholarship processes that also depend on the PSAT (the cut-off scores are a bit lower), then your child never has to take a PSAT. It is perfectly fine to save your energy, and your child’s for the ACT and/or SAT.</p>
<p>The private school my daughter attends gives the sophomores the PLAN test (a pre-ACT) and the juniors the PSAT on the same Wednesday each fall. I wanted my D to see how she would do on a PSAT as a sophomore, so I contacted a local public school and made arrangements for her to take it there on the Saturday as a sophomore. At first she was on a waiting list; I should have called earlier to find out when registration was. At least a month before the PSAT, the school called to say there was a spot for her. She didn’t put in a lot of preparation for it, but the test results gave her a good picture of what she needed to do to improve her scores as a junior.</p>
<p>My S’s school makes the PSAT available for 10th and 11th grades. He took it in 10th last year and I found it enormously helpful. The score report shows where they placed among their peers and gives an item by item analysis of scores. It has helped set the agenda for preparing for the high-stakes 11th grade test this October.</p>
<p>My oldest son took it as a sophomore – for practice. Then, he took it as a junior for National Merit consideration. My youngest son will have a chance to do it this fall as a freshman – the guidance director told me that he always has extra copies that he pays for.</p>
<p>For D’10 the HS offered the PLAN for 10th grader, the PSAT as optional for 10th graders, and the PSAT again for 11th graders (when it “counts” for National Merit & she did end up qualifying.</p>
<p>For D’13, the HS offered the PSAT to them this past year as 9th graders; I’m assuming she’ll take both the PLAN and the PSAT as a 10th grader, then the PSAT again “for real” as an 11th grader.</p>
<p>You are somewhat limited in that you have to work through the individual schools as opposed to registering for a national test date like you do for the ACTs and SATs.</p>
<p>Yep, our school has joined the trend of allowing “advanced” freshman to take the PSAT, then everyone takes it to practice as sophomores and then takes it “for real” as juniors to qualify for National Merit.</p>
<p>Personally, I was not happy that my S took it as freshman this past year. He scored well, but he is taking that as proof that he doesn’t need to work at it sophomore and junior years. He is one of those kids that always settles for “good enough.”</p>
<p>Our HS gives the PSAT in the fall of the Jr year. Students that are in Pre-AP English 10 (what other schools call Honors English I think) also take it in the fall of their Soph year. The Jr fall SAT was more useful for S2 than the soph, as it identified where he needed to focus his study for the SAT in spring Jr year. </p>
<p>He is an ‘A’ English student (not by nature-he does work at it), however the information was presented in a way that wasn’t easy for him to decipher. This is not uncommon. He spent a decent amount of time prepping for CR and it paid off. At that point they either know the information or they don’t, it’s a matter of learning to take the test.</p>
<p>Take it as a soph for practice and as a jr for the real thing. No disadvantage in taking it soph yr and no advantage in waiting until jr year IMO.</p>
<p>We live in ACT land so all kids take the PLAN (10th) and the state version of the ACT (11th). An ACT prep class is a required junior year class. Because of the scholarship opportunities some sophomores are invited to try the PSAT as a dry run and the school does pay for all juniors who sign up and want to take the Saturday PSAT.</p>
<p>Count our school as another that gives it to all 10th grade as “practice” and all 11th grade for National Merit purposes.</p>
<p>Our school strongly discourages studying for it as a 10th grader. The score is not reported for anything “official” at this level. The school doesn’t want to burn kids out of studying for standardized tests too early.</p>
<p>My kids have never been big on studying for these tests. I thinking taking it as a sophomore for practice is a great idea. One should at least review the booklet that they send ahead of the test, but I don’t think that you have to do a lot of studying for it as a sophomore. It’s good to see whether you are likely to be in the running for National Merit. </p>
<p>My older son’s scores were so high as a sophomore (highest in the school apparently) - he could have qualified for NMF with them - for him the biggest advantage was that his new to the school counselor immediately pegged him as a kid to pay attention to. He got recommended for various opportunities because of those scores. (Science program at Columbia, lecture series at IBM.) His scores only improved very slightly junior year. </p>
<p>My younger son had solid scores but below the Commended Student cut off. His scores went up 20 points (Equivalent to 200 points on SAT.) from soph. to jr. year without any additional studying. A lot of that was due to what he now knew in math. That was quite clear with the score report, so he went into the PSATs junior year confident that his math score would go up.</p>
<p>Both my kids’ schools paid for the kids to take the PSAT as freshmen and sophs. They did not studying, as we wanted to see what the baseline scores looked like. In late summer before junior year, both guys did a full practice PSAT exam plus sections of others to shore up their skills in areas that were giving them trouble. S1 went from a 215 freshman year to a 234 junior year, then 2380 on the SAT.</p>
<p>With S2 particularly, the two additional years of VERY challenging pre-IB math and English at his school were sufficient to pull his scores up significantly. (181 freshman year, 203 soph, to 218 junior year, then 2290 on the SAT) </p>
<p>Neither took the SAT until March of junior year. We never did talent search testing either. Did not use a prep course, just a couple of test guides. Most valuable part of the exercise was going over the error patterns with them.</p>
<p>We DID do SAT-II testing as soon as the guys finished the appropriate course, so by the end of soph year they both had two of their three SAT-IIs completed. We seriously wanted to avoid standardized testing in senior year, esp. for S2, as he was playing a fall sport and in IB. I recommned this strategy, as the material is still fresh in the kids’ minds. (CC poster Marian recommended this strategy a few years ago and we found it VERY helpful.)</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for your responses. I was thinking that letting my D take it as a sophomore as a practice dry run seemed to make sense. She can get a feel for what the test is like, see what areas she might want to try to improve upon before the “real” PSAT in her Jr year and also just to reduce test anxiety/fear. She believes she doesn’t test well, even though we have never told her this nor do I see it reflected in her school grades. I have, however, seen it reflected in standardized test scores. </p>
<p>I think I will call around to some of the local high schools (her school is a private parochial) and see what I can find out.</p>
<p>Thank you!</p>