The Big Tests: How Does the PSAT Fit into the Picture?

The College Board reports that the results of the PSAT correlate highly with what a student’s SAT score would be if the student took the SAT at that time. The typical score on the SAT taken a few months later is usually higher, even without test prep. The rationale behind the PSAT is to give students an idea of their potential strengths and weaknesses on the SAT early in their junior year so that they can prepare appropriately for the real thing.

The PSAT also serves as the screening mechanism for the National Merit Scholarship Program, a large nonprofit scholarship and recognition program. The full name of the test is PSAT/NMSQT, reflecting its dual role. In addition, it is used to identify students for the National Achievement Scholarship program (for African Americans) and the National Hispanic Recognition program. Each spring, the National Merit Scholarship Corporation contacts the 50,000 high school juniors who score in the top 2 percent of those taking the PSAT nationwide the preceding October, and invites them to identify two colleges they would like to be notified of their honor. The cutoff score for notification is usually around 200 out of 240 and is the same for all states in a given year. This is helpful to the colleges that get your name and may count as demonstrated interest, but only at those places that normally put weight on that in the admissions process. Colleges do not receive your actual PSAT scores.

In September of their senior year, about 16,000 of the 50,000 students notified the previous spring are informed that they have been selected as National Merit Scholarship semifinalists. Eligibility for semifinalist status varies from year to year and is determined on a state-by-state basis, with the cutoff score based on the top 1 percent of scores in each state. For 2008–09, the cutoff score ranged from a low of 201 in Wyoming and Mississippi to a high of 222 in Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. It was 217 in California, 215 in Texas, and 216 in New York. The cutoffs for different states may vary slightly from year to year and are not widely publicized. However, you can call the National Merit Scholarship Corporation’s offices at 847–866–5100 to get the most recent cutoff score for your state if you are curious. The remaining 34,000 students who are not named semifinalists are named “commended students” and receive a small certificate.

Semifinalists are invited to submit an essay, transcript, SAT scores, and a school recommendation to be considered for finalist status. About 90 percent of semifinalists become finalists, and about half of those subsequently receive some monetary award either directly from the National Merit Corporation itself, from a participating company that one of their parents works for, or from one of about two hundred participating colleges eager to enroll National Merit Finalists. A National Merit Finalist who receives a scholarship of any kind is known as a National Merit Scholar. Too many students are named finalists for such an honor to carry much weight at the most selective colleges, however, and some of them, including the entire Ivy League, MIT, the University of California, Stanford University, and many others, award no money of their own through the National Merit Scholarship Program. Some schools have become concerned about using the PSAT as a screening test for the program. The program has great prestige, yet the criterion of “merit” for semifinalist status is performance on one two-hour multiple choice test taken in the junior year. This is a rather thin definition of merit. Additional details about the program (minus the concerns) can be found at www.nationalmerit.org.

For many years, the National Merit Corporation administered its own selection test independent of the PSAT. Now that the PSAT serves as the qualifying test for the National Merit program, some high schools no longer see the PSAT purely as the practice test for juniors that it was originally intended to be. Private schools and high-performing public high schools usually offer the PSAT to sophomores and occasionally even to freshmen. The idea is to give them practice on the so-called practice test they will take as juniors. This is a good example of a decent idea being taken to extremes, with students enrolling in formal PSAT prep courses in response to the current anxiety surrounding testing. Do you really need to practice for a practice test? The mistake is in thinking that the tests, especially the PSAT, are more significant than they really are.