Final PSAT Preparation

We're coming down to the wire on Greg's PSAT prep. The test is the day after tomorrow. As you may recall we bought the Kaplan PSAT book and the plan was for him to study pretty intensively for the 2-3 weekends before the test. Life got in the way and he ended up with one light weekend and one pretty solid one. He did well on the sample Kaplan test yesterday so hopefully he has prepared enough.

Since one of the reasons to take the PSAT is to qualify for the National Merit Scholarship (the other is to practice for the SAT), I was curious about how the NMS selection process is run. Greg's high school recently announced this year's Seniors who were 'commended' and 'semifinalists' from last year's test. The commended group represents the top 4% of all students and the semifinalists the top 1%. But what happens to each group from here on out? Who wins the big bucks?

Here's the page on the National Merit Scholarship site that describes the process. The summary is:

• 50,000 students are recognized out of about 1.4m total students who take the test
• 34,000 are commended. They get a pat on the back and some recognition to help enhance their college application.
• 16,000 (top ~1%) are semi-finalists. Here's a list of the cutoff score, by state, from past years needed to qualify for the semifinals (from the discusssion forum College Confidential)
• 15,000 become finalists based on grades and a written application
• 8,200 win a scholarship of some sort based on SAT scores, a written recommendation from your school and an essay you write. This is a subjective process where NSMC selectors pick the winners based on all the materials submitted.

The site is a little fuzzy on exactly how much you can win, partly because many of the awards come directly from your college or a corporation. There are some number of 'National Merit' awards of $2,500 that come directly from National Merit Scholarship Corporation. They make an overall claim that 10,500 students won $50 million last year (not sure how this jibes with the 8,200 winners mentioned above). But it sounds like on average you could win is $5,000-$6,000 if you're part of the winning group of 8-10k students.

By the way, Greg scored a 222 on his practice test. Last year the semifinalist cutoff for Georgia was 218. Hopefully he can maintain or improve upon his score -- and hopefully that Kaplan test was representative of the real thing.

Preparing for the PSAT

Greg, my Junior son, will be taking the PSAT in about three weeks. This past weekend we agreed that he's going to spend some time prep-ing between now and then.

Greg has the one sample test his high school provided, but that's all -- and it's probably not enough. So I spent some time today looking around for other PSAT prep resources.

Before I share the materials I found, here's some background on the PSAT that came up in my research.

• The PSAT doesn't count as part of your college application. Instead, one of its main purposes is to help you practice for the SAT.


• The second purpose of the PSAT is to qualify students for the National Merit Scholarship competition.

On this second point, here's an interesting post from the College Confidential discussion forum that reveals the minimum PSAT score necessary, by State, in order to qualify for National Merit consideration. In Georgia the cutoff was 215 last year. Greg got a 185 when he took the PSAT as a Sophomore. So if he wants a chance at the scholarship (and the accompanying accolades) he needs to improve his score by at least 30 points (or about 16%). That's why PSAT prep is going to be an important activity over the next several weeks.

A pretty typical way to prep for standardized college admissions tests is with a book. It's also a good way to get extra practice tests. Here's a College Confidential post that preferred the Barron's and Kaplan books over the one from Princeton Review. Here's another post that echos this and adds some other book strategies & suggestions.

Of course Amazon is the go-to resource for books and their reviews. Here are links to the Barron's and Kaplan books found there. After scanning the reviews for these (& the Kaplan '07 book) my conclusion was that it was pretty close to a toss-up between the two of them. We had used the Kaplan book last time successfully, and Kaplan sponsored a free SAT practice test at Greg's High School, so that's what I ordered tonight from Amazon. With the Kaplan book we'll get 400+ pages of tips, tricks and three practice tests. This should be enough -- especially give there are only two weekends left until the test.

If a book sounds like overkill, or you don't want to spend the money, there are two free on-line options for practice questions I found. The College Board offers a pretty light weight intro to the PSAT service with an overview of the test and about 35 sample questions. This should take less than an hour to digest and might be a good way to get the reluctant student underway with his/her prep work. There's another general purpose College Admissions site called Peterson's that offers a free (full-sized) on-line PSAT practice test. All you need to access it is a quick on-line registration. I signed up and verified that there weren't any hidden costs, but I didn't actually try the test. Please leave a comment with your reaction to this tool if you end up trying it.

Finally, if all you want is to order past individual PSAT tests (the actual ones), the College Board sells them for $3 each, and they're available at Amazon for $5+. What's unclear to me is whether these come with answer keys or answer explanations. A quick call to the College Board would probably clarify that.

The consensus of my research seems to be that formal test prep courses for the PSAT aren't 'worth it' But if you want to take a course and there's not one in your neighborhood, Peterson's also offers an on-line PSAT Prep Course for $85. Again, I haven't tried this so please leave a comment if you do.

If you or your student is about to take the PSAT, best of luck prep-ing and when you take the test.