By Adelyn Ho, Staff Writer
Sophomores and juniors all over the United States took College Board’s PSAT : the Preliminary SAT, throughout the month of October.
The PSAT is a practice test before students take the SAT as juniors or seniors. It consists of a Reading and Writing Section and a Math Section. It’s 2 hours and 14 minutes long with 98 questions for the whole test, and it’s not scored out of 1600 like the regular SAT– it’s scored out of 1520. Juniors who took the PSAT also took the NMSQT (National Merit Scholarship Qualification Test) version, which qualifies them for merit scholarships or even full rides to certain colleges. Sophomores are not considered for NMSQT until their junior year. When it comes to the scholarship, each state has its own scholarship threshold. A perfect PSAT correlates to a threshold score of 228. The NMSQT calculates it by multiplying one’s Reading and Writing score by 2, adding the Math score, then dividing by 2. For Maryland, that threshold is high: the cutoff is about 221.
At River Hill, both sophomores and juniors took the PSAT on October 14th: a Wednesday on a shorter week. Janavi Kumaravel, a sophomore, felt that she “wasn’t really worried about [the PSAT] since it doesn’t affect my grades.” For her and other sophomores, it was simply a practice test for the ones to come. Kumaravel also explains how she felt the PSAT was “pretty easy, especially the Module 1 sections, but the Module 2 ones were a little harder.” The PSAT adapts based on how well someone performed on Module 1, so Module 2 is usually hard in comparison. However, Kumaravel viewed the Module 2 questions as “nothing I couldn’t handle.” After the long test, Kumaravel reveals that she was “relieved I got it over with, but I definitely felt tired after.” Standardized tests take a lot of energy out of people, and they can be incredibly stressful. Since she’ll be a junior next year, Kumaravel goes on to promise that she’ll “definitely study more next year so I can get a scholarship.”
Juniors, on the other hand, were in similar boats or more stressed. Ruy Garcia-Zamor, despite already having taken the SAT, felt he “wouldn’t do too well” on the PSAT. Since the merit scholarship is a high risk with high reward, the stress is on for juniors this year. Garcia-Zamor notes that “in general, people in my grade stress” about the PSAT because of the merit scholarship. Despite knowing people worry “about the scholarships that they could have gotten for it,” Garcia-Zamor doesn’t believe that this mentality is “representative of the whole grade, so I’ll say that the majority of people wanted to try but didn’t expect to get the scholarship.” When it came to the test itself, Garcia-Zamor thought that it was “easier this year for me, especially on the math section.” All in all, Garcia-Zamor, despite the stresses of the PSAT being a junior, is at peace with himself and the score he might have gotten. Scores for the PSAT come out on November 5th.
Freshmen went on a field trip to Top Golf on this day, which freshman Evan Childers cites as “a good way to pass time for the PSAT.” During the trip, Childers describes the activities to include “partnership minigames that focused on golf, like Sonic and Angry Birds games.” Despite this, Childers felt that “the only people that knew what to do were the people with past experience with golfing.”
Seniors, however, spent their PSAT day a lot differently. Seniors could come in for college essay help sessions run by the AP English Literature teachers: Ms. Martin and Ms. Lucero. Nathan Wang, a senior who came to school, noted that these college essay help sessions were important to him, especially because he “needed another perspective on my essay.” Other seniors didn’t come to school at all, using the day to get work done or rest at home. In fact, Wang was surprised that “a lot of [the seniors who booked college essays] didn’t show up… it looked completely booked, but not many showed up to do the essay and leave.”
Every grade at River Hill was busy on PSAT day, from a half-day field trip for freshmen, a relaxing day for seniors, to a tiring test for sophomores and juniors. With PSAT day serving as a break in the week before a three-day weekend, students can now take more time to relax.