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Yesterday, at school, my son was given a letter of commendation from the National Merit Scholarship Program. He did not have any preparation prior to taking the PSAT. Just wondering if parents do arrange PSAT prep and did I drop the ball in not providing this for him?

By Dadx (Dadx) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 08:43 am: Edit

Some people do that, but not very many in the competitive suburban school district I am in. Its pretty hard to target the semifinalist status anyway. Of course last year we had a guy who would have been a semifinalist his sophomore year, but slipped just enough junior year to be commended instead. He came very close to 1600 on his SAT later, one sitting, no prep.

Many(most) of our very highest scorers did no formal preparation. Kids at the commended level do fine teaching themselves if they are motivated.

THe only exception to this is the writing section, for which it is valuable to understand the "evaluation" formula and adhere to it. There have been many threads which convincingly discuss wide variations in grading of the writing.

By Sokkermom (Sokkermom) on Tuesday, October 05, 2004 - 08:59 am: Edit

Minor:
If your son received a commendation, he did very well on the PSAT. To be honest, we found that most selective colleges make no distinction between commended and semi-finalist recognition. It may impact scholarships, but the PSAT was not even a consideration in any schools that my son applied to. The SAT score is what counts and my son viewed the PSAT simply as a practice test for the SAT. In fact, he found that the PSAT was not really a good indicator for predicting SAT scores. He scored much better on the SAT. He did very little preparation for either test, and he only took each test once. I think your son will do fine. He has already proven that he is probably a good test taker and will do fine on the SAT's!