From the College Board’s website:
Who cares about the PSAT these days? Unless a student gets a rocket high score on the PSAT and qualifies as an award winner, the test doesn’t count one whit toward college admissions, right?
Right, and also wrong. Strictly speaking, the PSAT is not used by committees to make admissions decisions. But every junior takes them in school (and often sophomores and sometimes freshmen, too), and they tend to set a baseline for a future SAT or ACT score, and those scores do count, sometimes considerably, in those decisions. The vast experience of students is that their SAT or comparable ACT goes UP from their PSAT, because they’re older, more experienced, and they’ve had more time to learn material covered on the exams. Therefore, given an applicant would want to set the highest possible baseline, PSAT scores DO impact a student’s ultimate college admissions chances.
Old school thinking was to take the PSAT purely as a diagnostic test, to elicit strengths and weaknesses going into the all-important SAT (or ACT, which tests examinees on almost the same content, just in a different format). By old school, I mean before the number of applicants to college exploded, mostly with the advent of the CommonApp, which makes it oh-so-easy to apply to many schools with just a few clicks of the mouse.
So what’s the best plan in new school thinking? Good question, glad you asked.
One important reality in the new school is what the College Board calls Score Choice, whereby students can take an SAT, see their results, and THEN decide whether to send them to colleges (the ACT offered the same). Those of us who grew up in the old school faced different conditions: if we took an SAT or ACT, we had 24 to cancel them if we KNEW something went awry during the exam, otherwise, they automatically became part of our college applications. Admissions committees would see them. As a result, we used to take them once or twice to maximize the time to learn beforehand, in the spring of junior year and, if desired, again in the fall of senior year. The old days were more stressful because we knew they would count—good, bad, or ugly—but they were simpler because we didn’t take SATs and ACTs nearly as often.
Armed with this information, it makes sense NOT to use the PSAT as a simple diagnostic, but rather as a springboard to the highest ultimate SAT or ACT score of which each student is capable.
Given that there is a national ACT on Oct. 26 and an SAT on Nov. 2 in 2024, every student has an opportunity for a twofer, and by that I mean an opportunity to prep for the PSAT and one of these national exams at the same time, thereby setting the highest baseline possible for a college entrance exam AND having an opportunity to count the ACT or SAT toward admissions if they do well.
Taking any of CPE’s eight scheduled classes targeting 10/26 or 11/2 will empower college candidates to take advantage of this twofer. Any questions? Ask your parents. Kidding! Just text Dr. Yo at 413-329-7540! We’re here to help.
