Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums Identification, Testing & Assessment PSAT 9th

Hey there! I guess I would just ask the school. At our school, the sophomores are invited to sit for the PSAT too, and they all just take the regular PSAT, same as the juniors.

To be honest, I don’t understand the rationale for offering different levels of the PSAT at all, but maybe someone else here can shed some light. It sounds like a marketing ploy to me.

PSAT 8/9 is used by our district for class placement freshman year.

We received our girls' PSAT 8/9 scores the other day, and now I better understand this "luck of the draw" and careless error situation. While they both scored in the 99 percentile they each did not get perfect scores; DD13 forgot to answer one, and DD14 misunderstood how many questions there were and had to rush through the end of the test causing her to miss 1 or 2. Just one missed question caused the score to go down 10 - 20 points mentioned by Quantum2003.

So here is my question - do kids need perfect scores to get National Merit recognition? DD13, while a DYS'er, just isn't wired to jump through the hoops to get to perfection on a test. DD14, our overachieving girl, does not need the pressure to get that perfect score.

So here is my question - do kids need perfect scores to get National Merit recognition? DD13, while a DYS'er, just isn't wired to jump through the hoops to get to perfection on a test. DD14, our overachieving girl, does not need the pressure to get that perfect score.[/quote]

This is why I’d think very carefully about planning any intensive prep for the PSAT. It does come down to whether the kids makes a couple mistakes, jIMHO. Of course, there are a lot of variables. If you live in a high cutoff state or are international, there is even less margin for error.

And then it also depends on the college board- this recent sitting of the PSAT had some controversy. There is an alternate test date, so there are actually two forms of the exam given. Apparently the alternate test was ridiculously easy, so the resulting curve was brutal, meaning that missing one or two questions was enough to really tank the total score; you can read more about it on the compass prep site (there is an informative blog there by someone named Art Sawyer)-
Compassprep.com

Personally, our kids would not have tolerated prep for this, and I would not have pushed it at all, but that is easy for me to say, when we were not looking at schools which provide NMF scholarships. As far as college admissions, I truly believe that they care more about actual SAT scores- perhaps they agree that placing so much weight on one exam, and not a particularly challenging one, is kind of silly. I guess the main benefit we saw was lots of targeted college junk mail, if you consider that a benefit.

If you have a college board account it should have all the info. If you don't have an account sign up My sophomore son took the 8/9 last year and the PSAT/NMSQT this year.
That is what it is listed as on Collegeboard.

ETA: He also took the SAT last year (freshman) and will be taking 2 AP exams this year along with 2 SAT single subjects this year.

Mine took the 8/9 freshman year, the PSAT 10 sophomore year and the PSAT 10 NMSQT junior year. No one takes just the PSAT junior year at our school junior year. All juniors take the SAT in April.

DS is a sophomore and took the SAT in August for an upcoming residential school application. He prepared over the summer for the SAT and did well. It was only $10 to take the PSAT and since he had already prepared for the SAT he did not need to prepare again.

His scores were pretty similar although he actually did slightly better on the PSAT, 1500. Hopefully he can repeat it next year.

He used Khan Academy for his prep and it worked out very well.

Thanks! And...I immediately forgot my log in after posting, haha.

Thanks! It says PSA/NMSQT on the college board site, so I guess I have my answer. I guess my kiddo could also be taking a 4 AP exams this year since he's taking 4 AP classes?

PSAT 10 and PSAT/NMSQT are exactly the same, except the 10 is taken in spring of 10th grade (and has percentiles accordingly), and the NMSQT is taken in fall of 10th or 11th grade (and has norms accordingly). If you take it in the fall, it is the NMSQT by definition, regardless of nominal grade. There are norms for nationally representative 10th-, and 11th-graders, and taken from actual test-takers.

https://collegereadiness.collegeboa...ing-the-tests/compare-psat-nmsqt-psat-10

https://collegereadiness.collegeboard.org/pdf/psat-nmsqt-understanding-scores.pdf