Myth #1
“The PSAT’s are just practice. The colleges never see your scores and they’re not really important.”
Let’s start with an easy one and get it out of the way quickly. Many students and parents actually think that the “P” in PSAT stands for “practice”. Not only doesn’t the “P” stand for practice, the “SAT” no longer stands for “scholastic aptitude test”. Officially the letters “SAT” don’t stand for anything anymore; now they’re simply logo letters to identify the test. We’ll discuss that crazy and confusing change later but right now, get settled with this fact, there’s absolutely nothing “practice” about the PSAT’s!
They’re your one shot to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship. While technically it’s true that your scores aren’t reported to colleges let’s presume the admissions officers at America’s top 100 colleges have at least some common sense. If a student needs to score in the top 5% of the other students in his or her state to qualify as a National Merit finalist . . . then if you’re not a National Merit finalist you must not have scored in the top 5%. That sounds a little bit like they know your score or at least your score “range” to me!
That’s a very easy myth to bust. Some of the others that we’ll tackle here at uraccepted.com will be a little bit more complicated and take more explanation.
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