Lots of students (or their parents) will be looking at their 2015 PSAT score and trying to guess if they’ll make the National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist Qualifying Score, or to see how much they need to study to take the test their junior year. It’s always a guessing game, but this year the change in score scales has made it even more difficult.
The PSAT isn’t just a “practice SAT” or a “preliminary SAT.” The score on the PSAT is used by the National Merit Corporation to select National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalists. Scores vary by state. (Click here to see the list of the National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist qualifying scores for the 2014 PSAT by state.) Semi-Finalists then submit an application for the second round of competition. Finalists can win scholarships from the National Merit Corporation, but the biggest scholarships are awarded by individual universities and other corporations.
This year, you don’t just need to guess what the new qualifying scores will be; you have to convert your score to the old scale.
How to guess what 2015 PSAT score will qualify for National Merit Semi-finalist
- First need to know how to interpret the new 2015 PSAT scores.
- Then you need to convert your 2015 PSAT score to the equivalent of a PSAT scores in past years.
- Then compare your predicted range of converted scores to the last years National Merit Semi-finalist qualifying scores.
* For an update on why converting scores is so complicated, see the update below.
On a previous post, a reader asked how to predict if his score was likely to qualify for National Merit Semi-finalist, so I’ll use his numbers to go through an example.
The scores are 37, 36, and 32.5, which I’ll assume corresponds to Reading 37, Writing & Language 36, and Math 32.5.
Using the PSAT/NMSQT Preliminary 2015 Concordance Tables, I located the equivalent scores below.
2015 Reading 37 = previous years’ 75-77
2015 Writing & Language 36 = previous years’ 70-73
2015 Math 32.5 = previous years’ 66
Add them up, and the score total is the equivalent of between 211-216 in previous years.
That is in the range to be a National Merit Semi-Finalist in several states last year! As one, he would qualify for the next round of competition and be eligible to qualify for National Merit Scholarships from lots of colleges and universities. Unfortunately, I don’t know which state this reader lives in. Keep in mind that even before the changes, qualifying scores could change from year to year and can go up or down, usually up. And I noticed that the College Board has given themselves a lot more variation in the upper range of scores, so they have lots of room to adjust. So at this point, it’s all still just guesswork.
Often, not much separates the kids at the top. Sometimes it looks like a pretty good score gap, but in the upper range, one missed question can be worth multiple points. Scores that even approach the National Merit Semi-Finalist level are just as difficult to achieve, and a difference of a few of points on a standardized test doesn’t mean that one student is smarter than another, even if it looks that way. The good news is, even if he doesn’t make the National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist qualifying score, his SAT is still bound to be high enough to qualify for good scholarships at lots of schools on the basis of his SAT score alone.
If it looks like you’re going to miss the cut-off score, please remember that there are many paths to success. In fact, I’m beginning to think that if you expend a lot of energy trying to attain success as the way education defines it, you may actually hurt your chances for success. Check out my posts about Outliers.
For some more information on just how little we really know about National Merit Scholar qualifying scores, Can You Trust Your PSAT Score?
For tips to improve your SAT score and PSAT score, see my post about the best tools to improve your SAT score. I’ll be updating with a post for the new SAT, but this will get you started.
UPDATE 5/4/2016
New PSAT Score Compression – the best explanation I’ve seen about why the new score don’t directly correlate to the old scores. It sounds to me like it is going to make it even more difficult between students at the top.
National Merit Semifinalist Cutoffs Class of 2017 – A very informed attempt to predict cutoff scores. The analysis that went into this is impressive!
Using your methodology, when I calculate what my daughter’s national merit score would have been in past years the range is 213 – 218. Her National Merit Selection Index is calculated by College Board as being 217. Don’t you think that College Board is basically telling her where she would have ended up within that range? Don’t you think that College Board, despite the change from 240 to 228 total points, will try to keep most of the indexing the same to avoid confusion? Am I missing something?
That’s interesting because I have another score that came up in the same range when I did the calculations. I just thought it wouldn’t hold true for all scores; which might still be true – two isn’t really a a huge amount of data. But you ask a really good question. Why release a bunch of complicated “concordance tables” instead of just putting what an equivalent score would be on the score reports? And keeping the indexing the same *would* help avoid confusion, except then why would they release concordance tables unless some scores come out differently? The concordance tables specifically say they were released so that new scores can be compared to old scores. But then again, maybe they just goofed. There has certainly been a lot of that happening lately for them! And it will be a maddeningly long time before they clarify things too.
Whatever the case, congratulations on your daughter’s score! No matter what, she’s bound to do well on the SAT too, and there are lots of schools that will give scholarships to students with good SAT scores even without National Merit.
On the 2015 College Board “understanding your score” document, it states that the 99+% begins at a Selection Index score of 214. So you might extrapolate that if you got an SI of 214 or higher, you are in the 99.5% or higher category, which should qualify for most States. looking at the percentiles seems a more accurate way to guess because the percentiles are the percentiles no matter what the score.
Thank you for that information! I missed that statement. You’re right; that will start to give you a better idea. But, if you’re looking in a high state like Texas (you correctly said “most” states), you will have less of an idea. Plus, I have heard that some people aren’t trusting the percentages; some schools had a *much* larger number of kids score in the 99% than last year. Somewhere I read that there was a much bigger number of kids who took the PSAT this year, probably because they wanted to get a look at the new test format before taking the SAT. Again, thank you for adding to the information! When you’re playing the waiting game, every little bit of information can help.
What are your thoughts about Section to Test Concordance vs. Test to Section Concordance? Using the former, my son’s 217 translates to a range of 215-219. The latter has a one-to-one correspondence, so there is no range, and his 217 translates to 216.
Last year, our state (Illinois) had a cutoff of 215. Don’t know what to make of these numbers other than we feel good about his chances and will be sweating it out until September. 🙂
As best I could tell, the Section to Test Concordance was the one that the College Board recommends you use. Probably because everyone, including them, has no idea how this is going to end up and so they wanted to leave themselves a range. All of the numbers, even the one that looks like a one-to-one correspondence are a guess because of the redesign, so a range is probably more honest than an exact number. But I agree it looks like your son has an excellent chance!
Everyone will be able to tell more in May when CB releases something better than “preliminary” tables. In the meantime, congratulations and don’t forget to check out schools who give out excellent money for SAT and ACT scores, as your son should do well on those as well!