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I think it might be later this year?  Since it is new I heard it might not be until January.  Has anyone heard this too?

 

There was an update early in 2015 from College Board that mentioned a possible January release.  However, when I look at the College Board timeline, it still has December for scores being released to schools.  

 

[ETA:  I read farther down.  December (no specific date) is listed for "scores released online."  January (no specific date) is listed for "paper score reports sent to schools."]

 

I checked the add it up yourself method that worked last year, but I couldn't get it to shift over to 2015.  It may be that the scores aren't up yet.  It may be that the address varies too much for a simple date substitution to work.

 

Can't change the scores now.  Just have to wait.

Edited by Sebastian (a lady)
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Ahhhhh, so glad this isn't my concern this year!  But my sympathies to those of you who are agonizing over the wait.  I remember it well, and not fondly.  And, as it turns out, my very stubborn child who made over the NM cut-off for our state every year since seventh grade is only applying to one college, and it is one that awards a whopping zero dollars for NMF status.  Not that I'm bitter. . ..

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I'm not stressing this year.  DS2 took the Nov SAT and had really good scores.  Our current state isn't one with stratospheric cut offs.  So I can project that he will score well on PSAT too.

 

I agree about the difficulty in using last year's back door.  I don't know that there is open information to use in converting a raw score into a PSAT score.  Plus there is the issue that the PSAT score isn't the same as the NM cut off anymore.  (I found a thread about that from a while back on College Confidential.  The gist of it was that while the PSAT score is now 50% math and 50% verbal, the NM cutoff score is a formula that is 1/3 math, 1/3 reading and 1/3 writing.  When you combine that with the new reading heavy math problems, the NM awards seem to favor verbal excellence over math excellence.)

 

 

 

 

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Ahhhhh, so glad this isn't my concern this year!  But my sympathies to those of you who are agonizing over the wait.  I remember it well, and not fondly.  And, as it turns out, my very stubborn child who made over the NM cut-off for our state every year since seventh grade is only applying to one college, and it is one that awards a whopping zero dollars for NMF status.  Not that I'm bitter. . ..

I would have your daughter still go through the process with NM of qualifying for Finalist status.

 

My son's school also doesn't award money for NM, but he was awarded a one-time award of $2500 by NM that was applied toward his college tuition.

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I'm not stressing this year. DS2 took the Nov SAT and had really good scores. Our current state isn't one with stratospheric cut offs. So I can project that he will score well on PSAT too.

 

I agree about the difficulty in using last year's back door. I don't know that there is open information to use in converting a raw score into a PSAT score. Plus there is the issue that the PSAT score isn't the same as the NM cut off anymore. (I found a thread about that from a while back on College Confidential. The gist of it was that while the PSAT score is now 50% math and 50% verbal, the NM cutoff score is a formula that is 1/3 math, 1/3 reading and 1/3 writing. When you combine that with the new reading heavy math problems, the NM awards seem to favor verbal excellence over math excellence.)

Ugh! Ds is stronger in math. He takes it personally when he misses a math problem.

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The PSAT has always weighted verbal twice as much as math.  That is nothing new.

 

When I was a kid in the 80s , the National Merit number was calculated as double the verbal score plus the math.  Then, when they went to the 3-section, it was reading plus writing plus math.  Now that we're back to 2 sections, we're back to double the verbal and add the math.

 

Supposedly this is about gender.  Girls do better on verbal and boys on math.  The 1/3 2/3 score more-or-less balances the numbers of male and female scholars.

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The PSAT has always weighted verbal twice as much as math.  That is nothing new.

 

When I was a kid in the 80s , the National Merit number was calculated as double the verbal score plus the math.  Then, when they went to the 3-section, it was reading plus writing plus math.  Now that we're back to 2 sections, we're back to double the verbal and add the math.

 

Supposedly this is about gender.  Girls do better on verbal and boys on math.  The 1/3 2/3 score more-or-less balances the numbers of male and female scholars.

 

The difference now is that many of the math questions will hinge on a more sophisticated reading ability than before.

 

I'm not big on cultural bias accusations wrt the SAT, but I think the revision will have a disproportionate impact on students who are not fluent in English.  Perhaps that is intended, with a desire to improve the reading and writing foundations of college students.  But I think it will hit some of the students hard who were still working on developing language skills, but who are strong math students.

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I would have your daughter still go through the process with NM of qualifying for Finalist status.

 

My son's school also doesn't award money for NM, but he was awarded a one-time award of $2500 by NM that was applied toward his college tuition.

 

Oh, she did, but when I compare even the maximum $2,500, to the super-cushy full ride that would have been hers for the taking at some really decent schools. . ..  

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I think if your child put an email on the form, you will get an email with the access code. So the question is, did your child list an email address on the test?

 

Good question! I've forgotten if she was going to or not! lol  I'll ask her in the morning. :) Have there been any PSAT emails sent to those who provided an email address so far? (if she did provide an email addy, it would be the addy she doesn't use on a regular basis, so she wouldn't have noticed anything yet)

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That is my gut reaction (and my son's thinking) as well--but what can the College Board (and National Merit) do at this point?

 

I don't know.  Maybe some of our statisticians will chime in.  I suspect that they can adjust the curve somehow, but there's a reason why we've outsourced math here. ;)

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My conspiracy theory is that it's not just about lots of high scores. They could just curve it harder (unless a statistically abnormal number of people missed nothing).

I'm wondering if they would hold it based on who got what scores. If there was a dramatic change in the demographic profile of who missed certain questions it might give them pause.

Another issue with such word based math problems is that they may be harder to write in a way that excludes multiple correct answers. They have my sympathies here. I have been writing tests for Science Olympiad and it is tough to write questions that are on an appropriate level, aren't obvious and don't have multiple write answers.

 

They might have simply underestimated how many students would take the PSAT. It's possible that with the revision more students wanted the practice before the spring SAT.

 

I'm reminded of the saying about not ascribing to malice what simple incompetence will explain.

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I am also wondering if the issue is more about correlating the scores for the two tests. There should be a very similar curve between the two tests, and they might be finding that hard to achieve if there was a difficulty level difference. And since they had so little data beforehand they could have easily ended up with unexpected differences in test difficulty.

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I am also wondering if the issue is more about correlating the scores for the two tests. There should be a very similar curve between the two tests, and they might be finding that hard to achieve if there was a difficulty level difference. And since they had so little data beforehand they could have easily ended up with unexpected differences in test difficulty.

 

Are the "two tests" you're referring to the two seatings of the PSAT? Or the old PSAT vs new PSAT? Sorry, I'm having trouble following.

 

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Are the "two tests" you're referring to the two seatings of the PSAT? Or the old PSAT vs new PSAT? Sorry, I'm having trouble following.

 

I think she means old and new. Although they have changed the score so much with going to a lower high score and back to just two sections from three, they may have wanted the curve by percentile to look similar.

 

I'm disappointed that once again they have not made plans in advance for whatever the issue is. I have watched this with some of the AP revisions. They seem to play a lot of catch up, which doesn't build confidence in a megalithic organization that serves as a major gatekeeper to college entrance

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Are the "two tests" you're referring to the two seatings of the PSAT? Or the old PSAT vs new PSAT? Sorry, I'm having trouble following.

 

Actually I meant the two sittings, on the 14th and 28th. They want to make sure the tests are equally difficult, and there wasn't an advantage for one sitting or the other, and I could see that being complicated.

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Actually I meant the two sittings, on the 14th and 28th. They want to make sure the tests are equally difficult, and there wasn't an advantage for one sitting or the other, and I could see that being complicated.

 

Thanks for clarifying. It makes sense that the tests should be equally difficult. I do think they should have thought about that in advance though!

 

 

I think she means old and new. Although they have changed the score so much with going to a lower high score and back to just two sections from three, they may have wanted the curve by percentile to look similar.

 

I'm disappointed that once again they have not made plans in advance for whatever the issue is. I have watched this with some of the AP revisions. They seem to play a lot of catch up, which doesn't build confidence in a megalithic organization that serves as a major gatekeeper to college entrance

 

:iagree: No joke. I really am stunned that they didn't make better plans in advance. I think my older ds is going to try to avoid the new SAT (and possible headaches related to the roll-out of the new test) by taking the ACT. Hopefully by the time my younger ds needs to take the test (he's a current 9th grader), they'll have figured things out.

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Actually I meant the two sittings, on the 14th and 28th. They want to make sure the tests are equally difficult, and there wasn't an advantage for one sitting or the other, and I could see that being complicated.

 

I don't know enough about how they do test development to have a clue how they are going about this.  They used to have one experimental section on each SAT where they could test out questions and figure out how hard they were for the test taking population.  I don't know how they went about trying to test drive this new PSAT.  

 

It doesn't bode well for the new SAT in the spring, especially for timeliness of score reports.  

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I'm not stressing this year.  DS2 took the Nov SAT and had really good scores.  Our current state isn't one with stratospheric cut offs.  So I can project that he will score well on PSAT too.

 

I agree about the difficulty in using last year's back door.  I don't know that there is open information to use in converting a raw score into a PSAT score.  Plus there is the issue that the PSAT score isn't the same as the NM cut off anymore.  (I found a thread about that from a while back on College Confidential.  The gist of it was that while the PSAT score is now 50% math and 50% verbal, the NM cutoff score is a formula that is 1/3 math, 1/3 reading and 1/3 writing.  When you combine that with the new reading heavy math problems, the NM awards seem to favor verbal excellence over math excellence.)

They always have. When I was in high school, they only had 2 scores, but they would double the verbal and add the math. I made it. But I was in a state with a low cutoff. I pretty much had a perfect math score too. I was miffed that they didn't double the math and add the verbal. With all the supposed need for STEM, it really seems like the college board and schools and such de-emphasize math.

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They always have. When I was in high school, they only had 2 scores, but they would double the verbal and add the math. I made it. But I was in a state with a low cutoff. I pretty much had a perfect math score too. I was miffed that they didn't double the math and add the verbal. With all the supposed need for STEM, it really seems like the college board and schools and such de-emphasize math.

 

I did see an explanation that the older NM cut off did double the verbal score.  I think there is even more of an effect now with the math section gone to more language intensive questions.

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