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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]
What was up with Maryland's and DC's  selectivity score of 224 for class of 2022? Neither have ever been that high. 
Due to pandemic conditions in fall of 2020, most state scores stayed the same or went down. 
My theory is that savvy and competitive students and parents in this area took advantage of the relaxed alternate score process and summitted high SAT scores from any time in junior year. 
I don't think the 224 cut-off will be repeated this year. 
Thoughts?[/quote]

This is common knowledge (although both states are close to the highest cutoff each year anyway). But I view it through a less cynical lens.  Most MD students didn't have the opportunity to take the PSAT since schools were closed almost all year, so their use of alternate entry wasn't to game the system but it was the only way to enter. [/quote]

I am the op of this comment. I said nothing about gaming the system. I think more parents in the area were aware of the alternate route and thus their children were able to take full advantage of the opportunity. Thus skewing the scores in MD and DC. Not a cynical take at all. [/quote]

DP here.

There was no skewing the scores at all because alternate route scores do not determine the cutoffs. The cutoffs are always determined using PSAT scores.   So at best you are misinformed. In fact, MD cutoff for NMSF actually rose and is the highest in the country and thus became harder to get into.

https://www.compassprep.com/psat-national-merit-faq/

This is how it works  -    PSAT first takes the top 50K students globally to make them "Commended Scholars". This is the base.  Then the have fixed quotas for each state depending on its size and they take fixed numbers of top scorers from that state (all of them higher or at the commended scholar scores) and that is how the cut off for each state is  determined for NMSF. Total number of NMSF is around 16K.

The alternate route students are not even considered when setting up state cutoffs. NMSC only looks at the PSAT scores to determine the cutoffs.

If there was a global conspiracy and only less high achieving students took the PSAT and all brilliant students held back, then the cutoff would be very low. Then all the brilliant students could come via the alternate route and also get in. But why would a brilliant student want to hold back and let less brilliant student also get this honor?  So as you see, there was no skewing of the PSAT scores.

On the other hand, contrary to the cynical person who had some cockamamie theory -  [b]PSAT cutoffs in MD only rose higher[/b]. Which means that more and more, highest  achieving students are trying to differentiate themselves in a climate where standardized tests are going away.  PSAT cut offs rose in MD, and all the alternate route students (obviously those who could score well on SAT and were willing to report their SAT scores to college) were successfully able to meet those high criteria.

I can bet if  in future NMSF MD cutoff becomes 38, 38, 38...there will be enough kids who will meet this threshold too.

As for who benefited by the alternate route this year?  Probably, it was the bright B+ student in MD who took the PSAT and got a spot because majority of top scorers only used the alternate route (which does not have a quota).

My kid's magnet school had 30+ students who actually remembered to register for the alternate route.  Out of 250+ graduating seniors, around 80 scored 1570 and above. And many who scored 35 in ACT.  These kids simply did not enter the NMSF but would have qualified hands down.   So more kids missed the opportunity to enter into NMSF from our school.  Also, these 30+ students did not take a spot from the MD quota, so the number of MD NMSF increased.

There are more super high performers than seats for MD NMSF.

[/quote]

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