<p>Briefly, it helps identify areas needing study/practice; provides comparison to other college-bound students; determines NMS eligiblity; helps prepare for the SAT; and accesses info from colleges. </p>
<p>There is no mention of the PSAT as some sort of tool for high school administration.</p>
<p>Withholding/delaying access to the scores does not help accomplish any of collegeboard's stated goals. If anyone is being "selfish" in this process, it seems to be the GC's who don't want to be inconvenienced with questions at this time of year.</p>
<p>The PSAT is offered free of charge to all 9th and 10th graders in our school and it is used as a tool for evaluation and placement (not only for AP's and Honor classes, but for remedial as well). 11th graders do pay for the test and I'm almost sure that the school pays for students of low income families. I guess all the scores come at the same time (early December) and for some unfathomable reason they are not given out until enough people pester the counselors or whomever is in charge of releasing the scores, usually right before Christmas break, sometimes after the break.</p>
<p>Thank you Tyler, that link explains why GCs set up presentations prior to handing out scores, but it does not characterize the primary purpose of the PSAT as an administrative tool rather than an exercise to benefit the students.</p>
<p>The group presentation is apparently a recommendation of the Collegeboard, but it is described casually, and does not account for some high schools' weeks-long delays in releasing scores to students.</p>
<p>[Note to J'adoube: FYI, the PSAT is not offered free of charge to students of any grade level at our high school. I guess it must be an individual school's decision whether to cover the costs for 9th and 10th graders.)</p>
<p>Bay: I don't know if it is district wide or particular to this school (very large public). It'll be interesting to know. They seem to lack money for a lot of things, but they do have money for that so it's somehow cost effective.</p>
<p>While it must be nervewracking to wait for your scores until after the holiday break, most schools do say that scores will be available by January. Our school mailed us the test score sheet along with the test booklet to our home,and it arrived 12/15. There was no announcement at our school that the scores were in.
Since the NMSC will not notify students until April/May as to whether or not they are eligible to enter teh scholarship competition, you are not really missing out on any perks if you find out in January versus December. Finding out scores earlier must makes the wait for April that much longer. I would have rather found out after school started back.
If your selectivity index score does NOT have an asterisk next to it, then you most likely will be at least commended when they let everyone know in September. The delay to let students know of semifinalist standing is what really bugs me,especially since the scores have been available since October of the prior year!</p>
<p>The reason semifinalist cut scores are set quite late is that they are set state by state. And in some states students deciding to graduate a year early (that is, to make their sophomore year become their second-to-last year of high school) changes the numbers enough to affect the state cut score. But it all works out in the end. If you are a very high-scoring student for your state, you will receive notification that you are a semifinalist in sufficient time to do something about it.</p>
<p>It <em>IS</em> a problem to make students wait until their school is good and ready to 'release' the students' PSAT scores.</p>
<p>Last year, our school decided to wait until the end of February to release the PSAT scores. This was a MAJOR problem for my D who needed her PSAT score to register for a University Level EPGY Math course. My D received her PSAT score report so late that she couldn't begin her EPGY course until April 1st. She was supposed to begin the course Feb. 1st, but her acceptance by Stanford was delayed because of the tardy PSAT score report. </p>
<p>Not only did the PSAT score delay cut into the time she needed for her EPGY class, but it knocked her out of contention for highly competitive summer programs that required PSAT scores by the Feb. 1st application deadline.</p>
<p>Additionally, as someone already mentioned, many Juniors take the SAT in the spring. The Juniors whose PSAT scores are delayed by their schools are at a disadvantage in preparing for the SAT because they aren't able to pinpoint their trouble spots on the PSAT until weeks or months after those who received their scores in December.</p>
<p>There should be a class action lawsuit against the College Board forcing them to release PSAT scores in an equitable manner like they do with the SAT - everyone SHOULD get online access to their scores at the same time!</p>
<p>Can you tell this is a very sore subject for us? My older D was burned by this idiotic CB policy last year, and my younger D is likely to get burned the same way again this year. And no, our school has not yet decided when they will 'allow' our kids to have their PSAT scores. </p>
<p>There are various channels for gaining eligibility for EPGY distance learning math classes. A lot of young people have scores on the SAT from Talent Search testing </p>
<p>Yep, she sent her ACT Talent Search score from 7th grade. EPGY wanted a more recent test score (Talent Search was 4 years prior) and specifically requested my D's PSAT score report.</p>
<p>Since they make the acceptance decision, we had to wait 2 months to provide what they requested. Idiotic, I know. My D scored a 5 on AP Calc BC as a sophomore, but for some reason, EPGY insisted on submission of her PSAT scores as well before they would enroll her in the math course.</p>
<p>It is not at all unusual for highly competitive summer program applications to require PSAT score submission. Maybe they accept only those making NM commended (estimated?) and above - who knows?</p>
<p>Inequitable PSAT score report distribution by several weeks, if not months, is a serious problem that the CB should rectify.</p>
<p>It's our experience, too, that GC's act in the SCHOOL'S best interest, not the students'. Kids are pretty much on their own as far as making sure they aren't herded into inappropriate classes (read: too low level) that would better match the school's scheduling preferences than the students' academic needs.</p>
<p>The kids have to be informed, assertive, and proactive or they get walked all over to suit the administration's and staff's preferences. Sad, isn't it?</p>
<p>Collegeboard Quickstart was available on Thursday of the week of 12/10, i think. I think my counselor witheld our scores for a couple days so we could access our online accounts that night.</p>
<p>To all who haven't recieved their scores yet : i feel ya. Last year, our old counselor didn't give us our scores until February, and didn't even give us the score report, just a numerical score. Thank gosh i was a sophomore!</p>
<p>Besides the other points I've already made on this topic, I firmly believe that...</p>
<p>...if the student pays to take the PSAT, as they do in our school (and many others), they should get online access to a printable and linkable (for program application purposes) score report at around the same time their school gets the hard copy from the CB.</p>
<p>It's absurd to pay to take a nationally normed standardized test only to have the results held hostage by the school. In our case, it cost my D time and missed opportunities - a misguided collusion between her school and the CB's policy of letting schools decide when to distribute results to students, which she has mentioned as an obstacle beyond her control in some of her college application essays.</p>
<p>My younger D has a College Quickstart account with the CB because she took the PSAT last year as a soph. But, she can't access her 2007 PSAT scores without the access code on the score report that her school is withholding until who knows when.</p>
<p>
[quote]
It's our experience, too, that GC's act in the SCHOOL'S best interest, not the students'.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I believe that this problem is quite general, and I think I am in agreement with the person I am quoting that this problem goes well beyond undue slowness in explaining PSAT results. </p>
<p>I think it's a little more debatable to say that students pay for their own PSAT scores, inasmuch as the price of the PSAT at most high schools is heavily subsidized by the school. (Contrast the student's list price for the PSAT with the student's list price for the SAT.) But, yes, College Board certainly is not setting up a rule or an expectation that high schools should wait until AFTER summer program application deadlines to release PSAT scores, so when a high school does that, it is being too slow, and it would be helpful for students to have a different channel, by year end at the latest, to obtain official PSAT scores. I'm always all for more rather than less information being individually available to students via websites.</p>
<p>I'll reiterate: It's absurd for a student to have to pay (whatever the amount) to take the PSAT, a nationally normed standardized test that in some cases determines college course enrollment and competitive summer program acceptances only to have their PSAT results held hostage by their school to the point where a student has no way of getting their score report when they need it - especially since tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of students receive their PSAT score reports by December 31st. </p>
<p>Why does the CB withhold PSAT score reports from students, and only provide them to schools, thereby deliberately participating in creating a subgroup of score report deprived and therefore disadvantaged students?</p>
<p>I really would like an answer from the CB on this. They were no help to us at all last December, January, and February when my older D was going through the 'no PSAT scores, yet' fiasco with our school. Does the CB read CC forums? Please explain why students can't access their own PSAT score reports, CB!</p>
<p>Oh, and there's still no word on when our school will 'decide' to distribute this past October's PSAT score reports. Here we go again, this is negatively impacting my younger D in much the same way my older D was burned last year.</p>
<p>I just received a letter from my auto insurance company today outlining their new policy of requiring a copy of a standardized test score report from within the past 12 months to confirm my younger D's eligibility for the good student discount. The letter explains that they don't consider GPA's alone anymore because of what they found to be a high incidence of grade inflation, nationwide. They know my D is a junior from her HS transcript and have asked for a copy of her PSAT score report (what score report?). My older D has to send a copy of her ACT or SAT, she has both because students <em>are</em> allowed access to their score reports for those tests.</p>
<p>The PSAT is the only standardized test my younger D took within the last 12 months, and she has no way of accessing her score report until the school 'feels' like distributing them.</p>
<p>Add my younger D's good student auto insurance discount to the other things my D's have missed out on because the CB does not allow students to access their own PSAT score reports.</p>
<p>I'd be curious to know what an insurance company thinks is a high enough PSAT/SAT/ACT score to qualify for the "good student" discount. Hope no one at the company is on CC because he/she might have a skewed perspective!</p>