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In no rush, Case Western and Tulane keep some Early applicants in suspense

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Slow and steady wins the race?

Once upon a time, refined Early Decision and Early Action etiquette dictated that by December 15 colleges would inform such applicants of their admission, deferral, or rejection. My how times have changed!

While the likes of Penn, Johns Hopkins, Northwestern, Wash U., and Yale got on with it last week, some big names are keeping their powder dry to seemingly the last moment. University of Michigan and Boston College are notorious in recent years for December 18 or later admissions notifications to their Early Action applicants; yet, this year, two more colleges seem to believe the maxim that they should, “save the best for last.”

The two notable stragglers this December are Case Western Reserve University and Tulane University.

In Case’s case, Robert R. McCullough, the university’s Dean of Undergraduate Admissions, announced Monday, “We expect to send applicants an email providing a link to the secure webpage with their admission status on Wednesday, Dec. 19. We will begin sending these email notifications around 8 p.m. EST. Students who have applied for financial aid will also be able to see their financial aid package online at that time.” Just two years ago Case’s Early Action notifications came out a whole week earlier in December. That was before Case Western introduced Early Decision I and II into the mix and with it gone are the days of earlier Early notifications.

UPDATE 12/19/18 @ 7:20 EST: McCullough needs more time! On December 19 in the evening he announced, “Unfortunately, we find that we need a little more time to be absolutely sure applicants’ decisions, scholarships and financial aid packages are correct. We are therefore rescheduling decision release for Early Action and Early Decision admission until 8 p.m. Eastern Thursday, December 20.” He also expressed “regret” for holding students in suspense for another day but wanted to ensure the decisions they receive are accurate.”

Tulane will let Early Action applicants to the New Orleans university know of their admissions decisions on Thursday, December 20, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Jeff Schiffman, Tulane’s Director of Admission shared, “I think it is also worth mentioning that Tulane saw a 14% increase in applications this year. Bottom line, we could fill up multiple freshman classes with students who are academically qualified to attend Tulane. We could fill up multiple freshman classes just with students who would be great fits here and genuinely want to be at Tulane. The problem is we can’t admit all of them.”

To Shiffman’s credit – and Tulane’s – the university notified its Early Decision applicants regarding their admissions decisions refreshingly fast. Tulane’s ED admission letters left Tulane’s Office of Admission on November 16 and were made available online at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on November 19. Talk about a nice Thanksgiving present! More universities should try to turn around admissions decisions in fewer than three weeks (Tulane’s Early Decision application deadline was November 1)!

Tulane, back in the day, released its Early Action notifications in November, but that was before they got into the ED I and ED II business recently.

So, seniors dreaming of a Case Western or Tulane acceptance letter this Christmas, hold on just a bit longer.

University of Texas at Austin Releases First Class of 2023 Acceptances

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UT at Austin’s Office of Admissions began admitting students to its Class of 2023 on Friday evening December 7 when a few thousand fall 2019 freshman applicants received an email asking them to visit their MyStatus page for an update.

According to Miguel V. Wasielewski, University of Texas at Austin Executive Director of Admissions, the institution is “delivering about a third of our fall 2019 admission offers to majors this week.”

Wasielewski went on to explain that Fall 2019 applicants not admitted on December 7 will still be considered for the thousands of spots that remain to be filled in the first-year class UT at Austin’s admissions team is assembling, and that all students who applied this fall to be Longhorns will receive their final decisions “no later than – and perhaps well before – March 1.”

Good luck to all UT at Austin applicants.

U.S. News Reveals its Top 10 Undergraduate Business Programs of 2019

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U.S. News is teasing its popular Top Colleges edition with the release of the names of its 2019 top 10 Best Undergraduate Business programs. All of the programs included in the list are accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. Due to some ties, thirteen business programs appear on the list. See below for our thoughts.

2019 US News Top 10 Business Programs

(Including Ties and Listed Alphabetically)
Carnegie Mellon University
Cornell University
Indiana University—Bloomington
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
New York University
University of California—Berkeley
University of Michigan—Ann Arbor
University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill
University of Notre Dame
University of Pennsylvania
University of Southern California
University of Texas—Austin
University of Virginia

First Thought: Kelley at IU is by far the best back-door into America’s top business programs. It’s curriculum and graduates are highly respected by the on-campus recruiting community, which is where the action really is if you want to get a good job once you graduate. The admissions standards at Kelley, while they are far higher than they were ten years ago, are still far less onerous than those at any of the other undergraduate business programs on the list.

Second Thought: Cornell got what it wanted by reorganizing its business/hospitality programs in recent years. They are now regularly mentioned as one of only two Ivy League colleges in the big leagues in terms undergraduate business. Penn no longer has a monopoly on this designation, which is exactly what Cornell was aiming for with the revamp.

Third Thought: There is no excuse for a high-flying aspiring undergraduate business student not to have heard from at least a third of colleges on his or her list by February 1 if he or she is developing his or her college list correctly. Six colleges on the list below offer some form of Early Action (Michigan, UVA, UNC, Notre Dame, MIT) or Rolling Decision (IU). Meanwhile, UT offers Priority (11/1), and Penn, Cornell, NYU, and Carnegie Mellon offer Early Decision. Just as in the world of business, in the world of undergraduate admission, the early bird gets the worm! Get your act together early if you want to give yourself the best shot of admission into colleges deemed to offer the best business programs in the USA.

Final Thought: The list is definitely larger than last year when only ten colleges made this list because of a tie for seventh place. While more colleges are included, we are certainly happy to see the likes of USC and IU added over Boston College, Emory, Penn State and the like. From our experience there is a definite difference between both the quality of the student and the quality of the student experience at colleges included on the above list and colleges not making the list. U.S. should try to not include any more colleges than thirteen on this list in future years unless a current pretender dramatically alters its undergraduate programming and/or its admissions processes.

Penn’s Class of 2022 Acceptance Rates

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Eric J. Furda, University of Pennsylvania’s Dean of Admissions, provided high school counselors with a June update today, and in it he shared Penn’s three acceptance rates for the just-concluded admissions cycle.

Penn in the city of Philadelphia, PA.

Penn’s overall acceptance rate for this year’s roughly 44,500 applicants was a hair above 8 percent. Yet, this number tells only a small part of the story. Over fifty percent of Penn’s Class of 2022 was accepted Early Decision, and Penn’s Early Decision Acceptance rate this cycle was 18.5 percent. This meant that Penn’s third and final acceptance rate, it’s Regular Decision acceptance rate, was a paltry 6 percent.

In terms of ratios, this year’s numbers track well with Penn’s proclivity for having an Early Decision acceptance rate that weighs in at roughly three times as size (percentage-wise) as its Regular Decision acceptance rate (18.5:6).

Furda also shared information on the importance Penn places on fit it its applicants while also informing counselors that last year, 46 percent of Penn undergrads received financial aid. The average aid award last year was an impressive $50,348.

Washington University Adds Essay and Early Decision II

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Julie Shimabukuro, Director of Admissions at Washington University in St. Louis has announced some major changes to the first-year application process for admission to the selective Gateway City university.

Washington University in St. Louis “will be implementing a supplemental essay in addition to the Common Application or Coalition Application essay. This will allow students to further express their interest in their academic area of choice.” wrote Shimabukuro in an email to high school counselors.

While that sounds all well and good, this news is clearly aimed at separating serious applicants (those who will surely claim to bleed Wash U. red and green) to the university from those just using the school as a great school that requires no extra work, which many high-achieving students have been doing for years because Washington University in St. Louis had no supplemental essay writing requirement beyond what many high-acheving students were already completing for other Common App and Coalition App colleges to which they were applying.

Shimabukuro went on to add that the new essay will also be used as the merit-based scholarship essay for scholarships offered by Washington University’s undergrad divisions.

It’s worth noting that applications for the John B. Ervin, Annika Rodriguez, and Danforth Scholars programs will continue to be awarded through a separate processes, which include more essay writing.

On top of this big news, Shimabukuro added the more curious news that Washington University in St. Louis will also add an Early Decision II application deadline for the first time this upcoming admissions cycle.

This means that Wash U.’s new deadline schedule is as follows for those students hoping to matriculate in Fall 2019:

Application Deadlines Scholarship & Financial Assistance Deadlines
Early Decision I – Nov. 1, 2018 Need-based Financial Assistance (ED) – Nov. 15, 2018
Early Decision II – Jan. 2, 2019 Need-based Financial Assistance (EDII) – Jan. 15, 2019
Regular Decision – Jan. 2, 2019 Need-based Financial Assistance (RD) – Feb. 1, 2019
Merit Scholarships – Jan. 2, 2019

Washington University in St. Louis is clearly trying to shake things up, but no reason was given for why EDII is being implemented. It will be interesting to see if Wash U. proactively communicates the acceptance rates for both of their ED rounds this time next year. The university has been one of the most successful users of ED as a means of loading up its classes early each admissions cycle.

Villanova’s Acceptance Rate Falls to 29%

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Villanova University will release its Regular Decision admissions notifications on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Yet, before it does, the suburban Philadelphia university has shared with high school counselors important bits of information about its Class of 2022 applicant pool.

According to Michael M. Gaynor, Villanova’s director of undergraduate admission, Villanova received 22,727 applications for the 1,670 spots the university has allotted for first-year students entering this fall. 22,727 first-year applications represents a 7.65% increase in first-year applications from last year’s previous high.

In addition, Villanova began offering an Early Decision application option to students who applied this past fall. In its inaugural year, 24% of Villanova’s entering class will be admitted through the university’s new Early Decision program.

Villanova also still offers non-binding Early Action, and 12,677 Early Action applications were submitted this past fall.

As a result of its new differentiated admission options, Villanova’s overall acceptance rate has fallen to 28.8%. Last year, when the university only offered Early Action and Regular Decision, Villanova’s overall acceptance rate was 34.9%, and during the previous admission cycle, it was 43.2%. Long story short, Villanova has now joined many other colleges in using Early Decision to reduce its overall acceptance rate.

Of those students accepted, the middle 50% earned weighted high school GPAs on a traditional 4.00 scale between 4.10 and 4.48. Note that such GPAs are not final GPAs, but rather cumulative GPAs students’ earned at the time of their application submissions. Also, of those students accepted, the middle 50% SAT score range fell between 1380 and 1490 and the middle 50% score range on the ACT was between 32 and 34.

Finally, Gaynor notes that some Villanova majors are harder to get into than others. In particular, the most competitive programs were Biology, Business, Cognitive and Behavioral Neuroscience, and Nursing.

Penn State Creates Early Action Deadline for Fall 2019 Applicants

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Big news for students in the high school Class of 2019. Pennsylvania State University, which for many years has had a Priority Application deadline of November 30 for first-year applicants applying for fall admission, has just announced that starting this summer (for students applying for admission for Fall 2019 and later) the popular university is instituting a new Early Action deadline.

Students applying by Penn State’s new November 1 Early Action deadline will receive an admissions decision – admit, deny, or defer – by no later than December 24. Penn State will still offer a November 30 Priority Application deadline for those students choosing not to applying by the university’s new Early Action deadline, and students choosing this later Priority Application will still hear of their decisions by January 31, 2019. In the past, students have heard back from Penn State in a rolling manner if they applied in the weeks leading up to its November 30 Priority deadline.

In addition to announcing the new Early Action option, Penn State has made additional changes to its application timeline that are important to note:

  • Penn State’s application for undergraduate admission will become available on August 1, 2018
  • Schreyer Honors College’s priority filing date will now be on November 1, 2018
  • The FAFSA recommended filing date is now December 1, 2018 (FAFSA goes live on October 1)
  • Early awarding of student aid begins for Early Action applicants in Mid-February, 2019

The big take-away is that Penn State is telling high school counselors to encourage their students to apply using the new Early Action deadline, which sounds to us like getting into Penn State using the priority deadline is about to get harder than ever. Students need to get their applications together quicker than ever for PSU; yet, their Early Action deadline is still later than early birds University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and University of Georgia, which both have EA deadlines of October 15.

It should also be noted that students hoping to apply to Penn State’s accelerated pre-medical/medical program or to its music, theater, musical theater, acting, dance, and golf management programs, will need to submit supplemental information to complete their applications – such as interviews or auditions – that will preclude Penn State from offering December 24 decisions for such applicants. Such niche program applicants, along with World Campus applicants, are not invited to participate in Penn State’s new Early Action program.

Penn State accepts its own institutional application and the Coalition application for domestic freshmen applicants. International students, U.S. citizens or permanent residents living abroad, and all transfer students must apply to Penn State via its institutional applicantion, which is available at MyPennState.

To learn more, visit Penn State’s admissions office here for additional information on the application review process and take a look at Penn State’s Early Action FAQs here.

 

 

 

Common App introduces an improvement that largely goes unnoticed

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Pepperdine University

For nearly a decade, the Universal College Application (UCA) has offered students the opportunity to include on their applications a “live” link or URL to online content such as YouTube, LinkedIn, personal websites, blogs, etc. In this regard, the UCA was way ahead of the competition, offering an option that both colleges and students seemed to want. Despite repeated calls to include a similar field on their application, the Common App opted to strengthen partnerships with outside vendors like SlideRoom (frequently charging applicants a separate fee) and resisted signs that colleges were increasingly transitioning to inclusion of digital credentials as part of the admissions process.

With the debut of the Coalition platform, the idea of making digital media available as part of the college application became more institutionalized. Videos, audio presentations and pictures can be easily uploaded to the Student Locker and transferred to applications for colleges requesting them. And most Coalition colleges opted to also use the upload function for the personal statement—something the Common App dropped a couple of years ago in favor unwieldy “text boxes,” which definitely limit an applicant’s ability to control format, embed live links and use different characters or pictures as part of their essays.

As the Coalition built on a precedent established by the UCA and opened students to the possibility of introducing colleges to their digital sides, the Common App responded by creating a relationship with ZeeMee, originally an online resume-building site high on visuals and low on written content. In the spring of 2016, the Common App introduced the new partnership with an “infomercial” at their annual conference and offered colleges the opportunity to have a field dedicated to ZeeMee included in their “member questions.” A number of colleges accepted the offer, some by stridently advertising for and recruiting students to the ZeeMee platform. Others were moderate in their requests and still fewer (one or two) suggested that students could include a link to ZeeMee or other online media if they chose.

But the times are changing. Without any promotion or advertisement from the Common App, many member colleges adopted the more “generic” URL field in their 2017-18 applications and are using this opportunity to encourage students to provide links to any site—not just ZeeMee. In fact at least 45, or about six percent of Common App members with live applications at this point, intentionally give students a wider opportunity to provide a link to a website of their choosing.

For the record, an additional 125 Common App members (as of this writing) appear to limit their requests to or provide dedicated fields for ZeeMee URLs—some with very strong marketing language.

But this welcome application development seems to have largely gone unnoticed. Perhaps it would be even more welcome if the link were “live” and a reader could click on the URL and go directly to the site—an opportunity the UCA has offered students and admissions readers for close to ten years! Unfortunately, the current state of Common App technology apparently requires readers to copy and paste the URL into an internet browser to access content. Nevertheless, the inclusion of a more general question in the bank of member questions is an acknowledgment of the value of this information to the admissions process.

Here is a sample of Common App members electing to move away from promoting a single site to opening their application to the inclusion of any URL:

  • Antioch College
  • Brown University
  • Centre College
  • Colorado College
  • Earlham College
  • Eckerd College
  • Florida Institute of Technology
  • Florida Southern College
  • Hampshire College
  • Kenyon College
  • Lafayette College
  • Marist College
  • Occidental College
  • Pepperdine University
  • Pitzer College
  • Texas Christian University
  • Union College
  • WPI

Franklin and Marshall, Hamilton and the University of Mary Washington make similar requests on the Coalition application.

And while the URL requests are fairly generic and don’t steer applicants in any particular direction, the award for best wording by a Common App member goes to the University of Mary Washington:

“Some applicants maintain an electronic profile (such as ZeeMee) that exhibits talents, creativity or other information to share with the Admissions Committee. If you maintain such a site, and would like the Admissions Committee to view it, please enter the URL here.”

The cleverest college award goes to SUNY Purchase, which gets around the deficiency in Common App technology by instructing applicants to be creative about uploading a document containing a link:

“For video submissions, post your video to YouTube or Vimeo and submit a document here with the URL link to the video.”

Note: For the nearly one-third of Common App members providing for submission of fully-formatted résumés, you can include URLs on those documents, upload them as PDFs and assume the links will be conveyed as live, thereby providing direct access to any online content you wish readers to see. Click here for more information on colleges that welcome your résumé.

Yale finds creative use of technology opens new possibilities for admissions

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Yale University.

Yale University is experimenting with the role digital media can play in college admissions. Using technology advanced last year by the Coalition for Access, Affordability, and Success, Yale’s admissions readers in some cases became admissions viewers and experienced what will likely become a third dimension in college admissions—the creative use of media to present the case for admission to a highly selective institution.

Staying on the cutting edge of technology is challenging in any field, but changes in college admissions since the introduction of the electronic application are almost beyond description. Stacks of manila folders tucked into walls of file cabinets have been replaced by application “platforms” configured to align with enrollment management software, which oversees a process that is increasingly data-dependent and data-driven.

 

And the work has become less cyclical and more continuous as applicants have the luxury of starting applications earlier by entering information that “rolls over” from one year to the next.  Marketing begins with the administration of the first PSAT, with even the earliest scores sold to colleges anxious to get their names before potential applicants. There’s hardly a moment to reflect on successes and failures before it’s time to gear up for the next group of recruits turned applicants.

But as almost anyone involved in college admissions would agree, something isn’t quite right with this picture—the entire college admissions process is due for a major overhaul. And a handful of deans and enrollment management experts are ready to try.

“Technology has transformed how we process applications and how we read applications, but not how we create content for these applications,” commented Jeremiah Quinlan, Yale’s dean of undergraduate admission.

Like many others charged with overseeing admissions, Quinlan felt the time had come for Yale to experiment with application content that responded to the pervasiveness and availability of digital media.  While the Common Application set the standard, others saw a market ripe for innovation.

“I really felt we needed to make a change. We were looking at more and more essays that felt like they had been written by 47-year olds and not 17-year olds,” said Quinlan. “We thought we needed more material—different material—in the review process.”

Enter the Coalition application. Born out of concern that reliance on a single electronic application was a risky proposition and developed with a view toward attracting a wider, underserved audience, the Coalition application as built by CollegeNet looked for ways to integrate creativity and give colleges the kind of basic flexibility they wanted in an application platform.

“After the fall of 2013, we needed to bring more options into the application space,” Quinlan explained. “We thought giving students a choice of applications would be better for colleges and better for applicants.”

One of over 90 colleges that originally joined the Coalition and 47 that actually launched applications for 2016-17, Yale viewed this as an opportunity to design a substantially different set of application specifications from those contained in the Common Application.

Students applying to Yale could choose to write two additional 200-word essays (beyond the personal statement and other short-answer questions) for the Common Application or they could choose to write one 250-word essay and provide an upload related to that essay on the Coalition application.

While many Coalition members chose to simply replicate requirements laid out on the Common Application, Quinlan decided to offer alternate but not totally different requirements on Yale’s Coalition application. He kept the prompts the same for both applications, but used the Coalition application’s functionality to support links to digital media.

“It was critical to our review process that we not give preference to one application type over another. Our results from the first year bear this out; the rate of admission for students who submitted the Common Application and for students who submitted the Coalition Application were nearly identical.”

Nevertheless, the results were exciting. While only about one percent or 300 of Yale’s applicants used the Coalition application, the advantage of providing students with a choice of how to present themselves was clear. In some cases, the online media helped “separate” a student or verified some element of the application that didn’t come through strongly enough in a recommendation or through a student’s writing.

“We found certain situations, for example, where a video component made a difference—showed examples of kinds of characteristics we’re looking for.”

To illustrate his point, Quinlan talks about an application Yale received from Justin Aubin, an Eagle Scout who lives and attends high school in the southwest suburbs of Chicago. Justin’s recommendations were excellent, and he was an outstanding student. But Yale has lots of those applicants.

What made Justin stand apart was a video his older brother filmed to document the construction of Justin’s Eagle project. In this distinctly amateurish record of decisions made as the work progressed, the Yale admissions office could easily see how Justin managed and supervised younger scouts and how he exhibited compassionate leadership, which inspired respect from the group as a whole.

The additional essay Justin provided put the video in context. But most importantly, he presented information that highlighted and underscored character traits Yale values and wants to bring to campus in the classes they admit. Other information on the application suggested this was possibly the case, but the video nailed it.

Justin Aubin was eventually admitted and will be attending Yale in the fall as a member of the class of 2021. And Quinlan credits Justin’s creative use of digital media—submitting the video—as making the difference

In all fairness, Yale isn’t the first institution to allow videos and other digital media to be submitted as part of an application for admission. Goucher College in Maryland and George Mason University in Virginia and others have video options available through institutional applications.

And it’s not all that unusual for colleges to offer several different application formats with differing requirements. In fact, smaller colleges make clear that their institutional applications are often more popular than the standardized Common Application.

In addition, last year’s applicants could use ZeeMee, an online resume promoted in questions on the Common Application, or SlideRoom—a Common App partner—to provide more visual support for their talents and interests.

But the difference for colleges using the Coalition application was that they could design their own questions and media integration. They didn’t have to rely on a third-party website that might encourage more “freeform” or off-message responses.

Yale’s new application was no more difficult for staff to review than the two-essay Common App version and could be scripted to allow for comparable responses across applicants using either platform. Linking the digital media to an essay prompt was key to the success of the experiment.

“Staff enjoyed doing something else. It was a way to experiment with new ways of interpreting new kinds of application content.”

Quinlan has a great deal of respect for the Common Application and has no interest in changing that relationship, which has worked very well for Yale. But he does want to offer students a choice of application platforms.

“We want the two applications to be different so students can be thoughtful about which they use and what they decide to present to us.”

While he expects to “tweak” the essay prompts offered in the Yale supplement, Quinlan will continue to provide the digital media option in the Coalition application. “We will maintain the two applications for next year with the same set-up.”

And students will be free to choose the application platform that best presents their credentials and makes their case for admission to Yale University.

For the record, the Coalition application will make available new functionality on June 15. And for the coming year, the roster of institutional members will grow to 135.  After July 1, colleges can open individual applications according to their own timelines.

National Merit® ‘Commended Student’ cutoff up by 2 points

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The National Merit® Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) has confirmed that the national cutoff score for the ‘Commended Student’ designation will be 211 for the class of 2018—or 2 points higher than the cutoff for the class of 2017. While the higher cut score isn’t particularly predictive of state-by-state ‘Semifinalist’ cutoffs (except possibly at the lowest levels), it does reinforce speculation that continued upward pressure on PSAT/NMSQT® scores may result in higher score requirements for students hoping to earn National Merit Scholarships in some states.

“A simple response to a 2-point increase in the Commended Student cutoff would be to assume a 2-point increase in state Semifinalist cutoffs. It turns out that things are far from simple,” writes Art Sawyer in the Compass Education Group blog. “Based on our research, we are predicting that the most common state cutoff changes will be +0, +1, and +2. We expect that a small number of cutoffs may drop a point or go up by 3 points.”

And between changes in test scoring eliminating the guessing penalty and changes in the scale (from 20-80 to 160-760), the use of data from years prior to 2016 make estimates for state-by-state cutoffs a little complicated.

In addition, the scoring changes together with a new computation for the PSAT/NMSQT “Selection Index” (math, writing/language and reading on a scale of 8 to 38 multiplied by two) also put into play the possibility that two students from the same state with identical Total PSAT/NMSQT scores from the October test could have very different outcomes—one commended (or semifinalist) and one not.

According to the NMSC website, of 1.6 million NMS entrants, roughly 50,000 with the highest Selection Index (SI) scores qualify for recognition in the scholarship program. Note that only students taking the PSAT/NMSQT in the 11th grade qualify.

About 34,000 or more than two-thirds of the high scoring juniors receive Letters of Commendation. These students are named on the basis of a “nationally applied” SI score which varies from year-to-year and is typically below the level required for participants to be named semifinalists in most states. For the class of 2017, the cutoff score was 209.  In 2016, the last year to use the “old” PSAT, the cutoff score was 202. In 2015, it was 201 and in 2014, it was 203.

The increase in this year’s cutoff for commended status is in line with generally inflated PSAT scores, which may have been encouraging to students initially hoping to qualify for a National Merit Scholarship. Unfortunately, life isn’t always so straightforward and the NMS competition is anything but straightforward. State-by-state semifinalist cutoffs are predictable within a range. But only after the NMSC applies a little politics to its formula and the announcement is made in September will there be any certainty as to who qualifies as a semifinalist. To earn the title of “finalist,” these students will have to jump through an additional series of largely bureaucratic administrative hoops.

To facilitate the conversation about the class of 2018, however, Compass Education Group has come up with a chart predicting “estimated ranges” (with 1330 comments) for the state-by-state semifinalist cutoff.  The ranges “reflect the variability of year-to-year changes within a state” and are based on research conducted by the test wizards at Compass Prep. While interesting, the ranges and “most likely” scores are by no means guaranteed.

At this point, it’s not worth spending a whole lot of time worrying about PSAT/NMSQT® results. They are predictive of very little beyond possible achievement on the SAT. Colleges will never see these scores, and how the NMSC determines state-by-state semifinalist cutoffs is entirely out of anyone’s control.