patreyus said:
So, the PSAT is only useful for the National Merit Scholars and Commended Scholars. You can do a google search and find out what the cutoffs for NMS and Commended scholars are in each sate. Generally, Texas numbers are high.
From my perspective it is just a gauge on how you son/daughter might do on the SAT. I would look at those numbers in that light and where can you student make improvements. Some will just come with more courses.
My daughter was commended scholar back in 2017 in North Carolina. First time she took the SAT she scored a 2060 old system out of 2440. She took it again and had a 2260. The hard thing for some kids is the math. I think you have to anweser a question every 45 seconds and I personally don't believe it shows a students knowledge of math but how quickly they can work. My daughter was outstanding at math but more methodically so we did some private tutoring to help her be able to identify the problems and solutions quicker.
Hope this helps.
The SAT is meant as more of an IQ test from my understanding. That's why you can often see great students who do poorly on it and average students that do well. It's about how fast your computer works and you can grasp logic and concepts. That's a different skillset than overall knowledge or ability to work hard and study that you need to make high grades. The ACT from my understanding is less so that way and kids that grasp material but less so in terms of speed do well so it is common to hear of the kid that was at the top of their class but got a lesser SAT score then takes the ACT and gets a very high score.
My son actually thinks the verbal is much harder than the Math though. I think that probably is more kid by kid.
