th
The following information can be found at www.collegeboard.com
I have placed the information below to make it as easy as possible for parents/students to get the data. The information is pulled directly from their website, with the exception of specific comments about Canyon High School. The blue links in the sections below are links to the sections on the website. Hope you find this helpful!
The Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT), cosponsored by the College Board and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation, is an important first step towards college . Test results and their accompanying analysis are valuable tools that can help prepare students for the SAT® and education opportunities beyond high school.
Each year, more than 3.5 million high school juniors, sophomores, and younger students take the PSAT/NMSQT to:


Prepare for the SAT
Enter competitions for scholarships: For more information, go to Scholarship and Recognition Programs .

Receive information from colleges: For more information, go to Student Search Service® (SSS®) .

Begin college and career planning

Help assess academic skills necessary for college-level work
The PSAT/NMSQT is the qualifying test for National Merit Scho larship Corporation’s scholarship and recognition programs.
Test-takers also receive My College QuickStart ™ , a free personalized college planning kit that includes access to
MyRoad
™
, the College Board's online majors, college, and career exploration program.
In 2011, 56 percent of PSAT/NMSQT test-takers were sophomores or younger students. Younger test-takers have more time to develop the skills reported on Score Report Plus that they need to improve to succeed in high school and college.
Students who take the test as sophomores need to take it again as juniors to qualify for National Merit scholarship programs .
9 th
, 10 th
and 11 th
grade students in Comalisd are signed up automatically. Homeschool students must sign up and pay the
$14.00 fee. Signup s begin the evening of Canyon High School’s Open House.
Mrs. Ricker presents in every 9 th , 10 th , and 11 th grade English classroom in September explaining the test to the students.
The 9 th
, 10 th
, and 11 th
graders are also given a study guide with a practice test in it. The homeschoolers that sign up for the test are also given a study guide with a practice test. Mrs. Ricker will put list serv messages about the test out in September as well as have announcements made at the campus.
The PSAT/NMSQT is 2 hours and 10 minutes long, plus approximately 45-50 minutes of administrative duties. The testing starts at 8:30 am. There are no makeup sessions at Canyon High School for this test.

The PSAT/NMSQT measures:
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

Reading, math reasoning, and writing skills that are important for successful academic performance in college
Knowledge and skills developed through years of study in a wide range of courses as well as through experiences outside the classroom
Critical thinking —the ability to reason with facts and concepts, rather than the ability to recall and recite them
The PSAT/NMSQT has five sections:
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

Two 25-minute critical reading sections
Two 25-minute math sections
One 30-minute writing skills section
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Scores for each section —critical reading, math, and writing—are on a 20-to-80 point scale

Correct answer = 1 point

Omitted answer = no points

Wrong answers to multiple-choice questions = minus ¼ of a point

Wrong answers to student-produced math questions = no points deducted

There is a charge of $14 per answer sheet.

The test fee is waived for 9 th
, 10 th
, and 11 th
grade students in Comalisd.
A limited number of fee waivers are available on a first-come, first-served basis for eligible students in eleventh grade who meet USDA Income Eligibility Guidelines (Free/Reduced lunch program).
My College QuickStart is an online college and career planning kit available free of charge to all students who take the
PSAT/NMSQT. It is powered by their responses to the test and provides personalized information that helps students take their next steps toward college:

My Online Score Report —an enhanced score report that allows students to review each test question, their answers, and the correct answers with answer explanations

My SAT Study Plan
—a customized SAT study plan based on students' PSAT/NMSQT test performance, highlighting skills for review and practice

My Personality
—a detailed personality test that helps students learn about themselves and discover majors and careers that fit their strengths and interests

My Major & Career Matches —extensive information about majors and careers, including insights about what to expect and what courses to take now


My College Matches
—a starter list of colleges based on students' home state and indicated choice of major
To sign in , students need:


The access code printed on the upper right corner of their PSAT/NMSQT score report
A College Board student account. (Students who do not already have a College Board account will be prompted to create one. It typically takes less than two minutes to create a free account.)
When students take the PSAT/NMSQT or register for the SAT, the College Board's Student Search Service allows them the option to give their names and information to colleges and scholarship programs that are looking to connect with students like them. Encourage your students to sign up for Student Search Service so they can take advantage of this convenient and easy way to learn more about their college opportunities.
Students who take the PSAT/NMSQT may qualify to enter the competitions for scholarships and may participate in recognition programs.
National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) uses the PSAT/NMSQT Selection Index scores (the sum of the critical reading, mathematics, and writing skills scores) as an initial screening of program entrants and to designate groups of students to receive recognition.
NMSC conducts two annual competitions for recognition and scholarships:
National Merit® Scholarship Program

Open to all high school students who meet entry requirements.

Each year over 1.5 million high school students enter the competition.

50,000 are recognized for their academic potential.

9,600 win Merit Scholarship® awards or Special Scholarships for college undergraduate study. (Special Scholarships are provided by corporate sponsors for students who meet their criteria and are high performers in the competition, but not Finalists.)
National Achievement® Scholarship Program


An academic competition in which only Black American high school students participate.
Black students who wish to enter the National Achievement Program as well as the National Merit Program request consideration in the National Achievement Program by marking Section 14 of the PSAT/NMSQT answer sheet.

More than 160,000 students enter each annual competition.

4,700 participants receive recognition.

800 win Achievement Scholarship® awards.
As cosponsor of the test, NMSC receives the scores of all students who take the test as well as information they provide on the answer sheets. Students who qualify for recognition in NMSC programs are notified through their schools in September.
To enter NMSC competitions, students must take the test in the specified year of their high school program and meet other published entry requirements . Almost all entrants are in their third year (grade 11, junior year) of high school.

Students completing high school a year or more early who are in their last or next-to-last year also may enter. For other situations, contact:
National Merit Scholarship Corporation
1560 Sherman Avenue, Suite 200
Evanston, IL 60201-4897
Phone: (847) 866-5100.
For more information about NMSC, visit www.nationalmerit.org
.
If you would like your home-school student to test at Canyon High School please contact Theresa Ricker, Testing
Coordinator at 830-221-2413. The deadline to sign up should be in September 2014. Please contact Mrs. Ricker at the beginning of September to sign up your student. Home-school students will need to bring a picture id/id, home address, and social security number for testing. On test day, when completing the basic information on the answer sheet, these students should enter their state's home-school code in the "school code" section . (This is available in the PSAT/NMSQT
Supervisor's Manual .) This will keep data for home-schoolers separate from our school's data. These students' score reports will be mailed to the home address the student enters on the answer sheet.
The lowest possible score on each section of the PSAT/NMSQT is a 20; the highest is an 80. To score the test, first, a raw score is computed:


Students receive one point for each correct answer, regardless of difficulty.
For incorrect answers to multiple-choice questions, a quarter (1/4) of a point is deducted. Nothing is deducted for unanswered questions or for incorrect answers to student-produced response (grid-in) questions.

Next, the raw score is converted to a score on the PSAT/NMSQT scale of 20 to 80 points. This statistical procedure, called equating, adjusts for differences in difficulty between various forms, or editions, of the test. Equating: o
Makes it possible to compare the scores of students who have taken different editions of the test o
Makes the scores from last year's test comparable to those from this year's PSAT/NMSQT
Concern for fairness is an integral part of the development of the PSAT/NMSQT. Comprehensive reviews and analyses ensure that questions and tests are fair for different groups of students. Although differences in test performance may be the result of many factors, long-term educational preparation is the primary cause. The test itself reflects such differences but does not cause them.
Student score reports show a numerical score for each skill area, as well as a range that extends from a few points below the score to a few points above. This range shows the extent to which an individual student's score might differ with repeated testing, assuming that the student's skill level remains the same.
When comparing scores between students in the same skill area, true differences in skill levels can be determined using the standard error of the difference (SED). Differences of fewer than 8 points (or 1.5 SED) are not significant, while differences of 8 points or more reflect true differences in skills.

On the score report, percentiles for juniors compare their performance with that of other juniors who took the test. For sophomores or younger students, percentiles compare their performance with that of sophomores. Percentiles are based on the critical reading, math, and writing skills scores earned by a sample of college-bound juniors or sophomores who took the
PSAT/NMSQT. Learn more about 2009 Percentiles and Mean Scores (.pdf/74K).
Requires Adobe Reader (latest version recommended).
The "Your Skills" section of the PSAT/NMSQT Score Report shows students how they performed on each of the skills measured by the PSAT/NMSQT. This information gives students a complete picture of their relative strengths and weakness, allowing them to see which areas they should focus on improving.
Students can then log on to
My College QuickStart™
, using the access code provided on their paper score report. There they will find personalized improvement advice and hundreds of practice questions to help them improve the skills that they need to develop.
The PSAT/NMSQT point scale of 20 to 80 is comparable to the SAT point scale of 200 to 800. A quick way to estimate a comparable SAT score is to add a zero to the end of a PSAT/NMSQT score. For example, a 42 on the PSAT/NMSQT critical reading section is roughly equivalent to a 420 on the SAT critical reading section.
Juniors frequently take the SAT six or seven months after taking the PSAT/NMSQT. Sophomores will not take the SAT for
18 months, so there may be a greater likelihood that these intervening activities will influence sophomores' SAT scores.
Estimating Junior-Year SAT Scores (.pdf/89K) shows how scores change for students who take the PSAT/NMSQT in
October and the SAT Reasoning Test the following spring.
A study of 710,595 students who took the PSAT/NMSQT in October 2007 as sophomores and again in October 2008 as juniors found an average gain of 3.3 points higher in critical reading, 4.0 points in math, and 3.3 points in writing skills based on a score of 20 to 80.
Keep in mind that these are averages: some students earn scores in their junior year that are significantly higher; others receive lower scores. In general, juniors with low sophomore scores have larger score gains than do those with high sophomore scores.
The data does not show to what extent average gains from one year to the next might be due to learning and consequent growth in the skills measured by the test, and to what extent average gains might be due to the practice effect of taking the test for a second time.
Learn more about PSAT/NMSQT Score Change from Sophomore to Junior Year (.pdf/53K).
The Selection Index is:

Used by National Merit Scholarship Corporation as an initial screen of program entrants and to designate groups of students to receive recognition



Reported on a scale ranging from 60 to 240
The sum of a student's critical reading, math, and writing skills scores. For example, a critical reading score of 56, a math score of 62, and a writing skills score of 59 would result in a Selection Index of 177 (56 + 62 + 59)
The PSAT/NMSQT is developed so that almost all students complete 75 percent of the questions. Approximately 80 percent of the students reach the last question. If there are particularly difficult questions at the end of a section, sometimes the percentage of students completing the section is lower than intended. Students do not need to attempt all questions in order to earn an average or above-average score.