1. PSAT Scores… Now What? Northwestern Lehigh High School Presenter
Leslie Robinson
High School Territory Manager-The Princeton Review
Phone:

2. Agenda for Today Understanding your PSAT/NMSQT Results
Intro to the SAT
College Admissions/Testing Timeline

3. Your Scores
Score
You can see your projected SAT score online in My College QuickStart ( art).
Score Range
Percentile
If you are a junior, your scores are compared to those of other juniors.
If you are a sophomore or younger student, your scores are compared to those of sophomores.

4. Your Scores What happens when you answer? If you get it right...
If you leave it blank...
If you get it wrong...

5. Your Scores What happens when you answer?
If you get it right… You get a point!
If you leave it blank… You gain/lose nothing!
If you get it wrong… You lose ¼ of a point!

6. Your Scores Low Scores (Lowest = 20) High Scores (Highest = 80)
Medium Scores
(Middle = 50)

7. Your Scores

8. Your Scores

9. Your Scores

10. National Merit Scholarship Corporation Information
The Selection Index is the sum of your critical reading, mathematics and writing skills scores.
If it has an asterisk, you do not meet all of the eligibility requirements for the competition.
The Percentile compares your performance to that of other college-bound students in your grade.
In 2012 the average score for juniors was The average score for sophomores was 127.

11. National Merit Scholarship Information
The Bottom Line:
If you are scoring extremely high, push to get recognized on your junior year test.
If not, don’t stress – use the test as a learning experience!
Only 1% of junior test-takers are National Merit Scholarship Finalists.

12. Your Skills
See how you did on each skill. The same skills are tested on the SAT.
You can try hundreds of practice questions, organized by skill, online in My College QuickStart (

13. Your Answers
You will get your test book back with your PSAT/NMSQT results, so that you can review the questions.
You can also review each test question in My College QuickStart.

14. Your Answers: Student Responses
Some of the math problems required you to grid in answers instead of selecting an option. For these questions, you will see the correct answer(s) written out.

15. Next Steps
What’s next?
Use the access code on your report to log in to My College QuickStart, a personalized college and career planning kit. There you can:
Search for colleges
Get a personalized SAT study plan
Take a personality test to find majors and careers that fit your aspirations

16. The SAT:
A Brief Introduction

17. Convert PSAT to SAT Simply add a zero to each of your PSAT scores.
EXAMPLE:
PSAT SAT
Critical Reading 52 —> 520
Math —> 510
Writing —> 530
Total —> 1560

18. Where will your scores take you?
Visit PrincetonReview.com for more score data!
Higher End of This List:
SAT: 2260
ACT: 34
(CalTech)
Lower End of This List:
SAT: 1850
ACT: 27
(Elon University)
Middle of This List:
SAT: 2050
ACT: 31
(Georgetown University)

19. What do P/SAT Scores Really Measure?
How well you performed on the P/SAT.
Not a measure of intelligence.

20. What makes the P/SAT difficult?
These tests are different from the tests you take in school
Number of questions – too many to finish
Tricky language in the questions
Common errors (traps) in the answer choices
No partial credit on math – process doesn’t matter
Points deducted for wrong answers on multiple choice

21. SAT – Quick Facts Frequency: 7 times/year
Duration: 3 hours, 45 minutes
Sections: Math, Critical Reading, Writing
Cost: $49 (fee waivers available)
Max score: 800 per section
Avg. score:
Math: 516
Critical Reading: 501
Writing: 492

22. SAT – Scoring
Each correct answer earns 1 full point, regardless of level of difficulty.
Each unanswered question earns 0 points.
Students lose ¼ point for each incorrect answer to a multiple-choice question.

23. If you don’t know an answer should you guess?
DO NOT GUESS RANDOMLY.
Use Process of Elimination to cross off wrong
answer choices and then take a guess.

24. SAT – Critical Reading 67 multiple-choice questions 70 minutes total
Tests critical reading, diction, and vocabulary
Passage Reading
Sentence completion

25. SAT – Writing 49 multiple-choice questions, 1 essay question
60 minutes (one 25-minute section, one 10-minute section, and one 25-minute essay)
Tests your ability to identify sentence errors, improve sentences, improve paragraphs
The Grammar portion of the Writing section makes up about 70% of your Writing Score

26. SAT – Math 54 questions (44 multiple-choice and 10 grid-in)
70 minutes (two 25-minute sections and one 20-minute section)
Tests basic arithmetic, algebra I & II, and geometry

27. How many questions? THE EASY ONES!
Slow down and answer fewer questions. You do NOT have to finish the test to get a good score.
Even though the questions have different levels of difficulty, they are all worth the same amount of points.
So, if easy questions have the same point value as hard ones – which type of question would you want to spend the most time on?
THE EASY ONES!

28. Math Pacing SLOW DOWN and SCORE MORE! Question #1 Question #20
Easy Medium Difficult
Math Tips:
It’s all about the pacing. Getting the easy ones = more raw points = high overall Math Score.
SLOW DOWN and SCORE MORE!

29. SAT Math
Not difficult math. Everything you need to know for SAT math you’ve learned by the end of your sophomore year!
Questions in 2 math sections of the SAT will be in order of difficulty. The first third will be easy, the middle third will be medium difficulty, and the final third will be hard.
Keep in mind that easy questions will have easy answers. Difficult questions will have difficult answers.
Knowing the order of difficulty in a test section helps you significantly when eliminating answer choices and determining your testing strategy.
Point of slide: shows the importance of little things like order of difficulty and an impact they can have on scores.
So how does knowing the order of difficulty help me? Remember a couple slides ago where we spoke about the biggest reason students struggle on the test is because for years they have been conditioned to take tests the “school” way. A teacher in high school doesn’t order her questions, typically, in order of difficulty.
Here’s what a typical student does on the SAT:
Starts off racing through the test. They only have 25 minutes and they have to answer all of the questions. They actually don’t, but because they do in school, that’s the way they approach the test!
The first questions are easy so they race through them. Medium ones they still find doable, go quickly through them. By this time they have 15 minutes left because they’ve raced through the first two easier sections and they spend their entire last 10 minutes trying to answer the hard questions. Why? Because they are hard!!! It will take them a long time to answer.
When a student puts their pencils down, they’ll find that they missed most of the easy questions because they were rushing, making careless errors, and falling for trap answers. They did a lot of it in the medium questions. They got all of the difficult ones wrong because they are DIFFICULT. These questions have been tested on students and students get them wrong.
Main point here – ESPECIALLY ON THE MATH. Go slow through the easy questions. Get them right because you can, don’t make careless errors.
Unless you are shooting for a HIGH score, leave the difficult questions alone.
At this point you say that all TPR students have their OWN pacing chart tailored to their strengths, weaknesses and desired score. TPR students know which questions to skip, focus on, etc.

30. SAT – Math Sample Problem
In the figure above, what is the greatest number of non overlapping regions into which the shaded region can be divided with exactly two straight lines? 6 5 4 3 2
How many actually understood
what the question was asking?
Using 2 straight lines they are asking you to divide
this DOUGHNUT into the maximum number of shaded regions.

31. SAT – Math Sample Problem
Go ahead & give it a try!
In the figure above, what is the greatest number of non-overlapping regions into which the shaded region can be divided with exactly two straight lines? 6 5 4 3 2
By a show of hands, who thought the correct answer was?
E) D) C) B) A) 6

32. SAT – Math Sample Problem1 1 2 4 2 4 3 3
The question basically asked you to divide this doughnut into the highest number of shaded regions possible using 2 straight lines!

33. SAT – Math Sample Problem
In the figure above, what is the greatest number of non-overlapping regions into which the shaded region can be divided with exactly two straight lines? 6 5 4 3 2
50% chance of getting this right - why might you eliminate 6?
no way that easy
P.O.E.

34. SAT – Math Sample Problem1 2 3 5 4

35. SAT Writing Question
If there is an error in the sentence, it is underlined and
numbered. Some sentences contain no error. If there is
an error, select the one underlined part that must be changed
to make the sentence correct.
In the year 1492, Columbus discovered the New World A
even though he was actually trying to reach India. No error
B C D E

36. SAT Writing Question
Darting from room to room and twitching, the cat’s strange
behavior worried her owners.
(A) Darting from room to room and twitching, the cat’s strange behavior worried her owners.
(B) Darting from room to room and twitching, the cat worried her owners with her strange behavior
(C) With her darting from room to room and her twitching the cat’s strange behavior worried her owners.
(D) The cat, darting from room to room and twitching, her owners were worried by the cat’s strange behavior.
(E) Darting from room to room and twitching, the cat’s owners were worried by the cat’s strange behavior.

37. SAT Sentence Completion
Elizabeth played six musical instruments equally well;
her musical skills made her a valuable member
of the orchestra.
Here is an example of a sample SAT sentence completion question the test our comprehension and vocabulary skills. Let’s read the sentence. If Elizabeth plays six instruments equally well, what word would you use to describe her musical skills? “diverse” or something like that? Yeah. Let’s look at the answer choices and see how they stack up. Does grandiose work with our word? No. What about residual? Nope. Pristine? Absolutely not. Fluent? Not really. We wouldn’t say someone has a fluent musical skill. Let’s cross it off. That leaves versatile. Does that match our word? Sure. That’s our answer.
On the SAT, There are 19 sentence completion questions and we have a strategy to help you attack them along with all the most important SAT words you need to know.

38. SAT Sentence Completion
Elizabeth played six musical instruments equally well;
her musical skills made her a valuable member
of the orchestra.
grandiose (B) residual (C) pristine
(D) fluent (E) versatile
Here is an example of a sample SAT sentence completion question the test our comprehension and vocabulary skills. Let’s read the sentence. If Elizabeth plays six instruments equally well, what word would you use to describe her musical skills? “diverse” or something like that? Yeah. Let’s look at the answer choices and see how they stack up. Does grandiose work with our word? No. What about residual? Nope. Pristine? Absolutely not. Fluent? Not really. We wouldn’t say someone has a fluent musical skill. Let’s cross it off. That leaves versatile. Does that match our word? Sure. That’s our answer.
On the SAT, There are 19 sentence completion questions and we have a strategy to help you attack them along with all the most important SAT words you need to know.

39. SAT Sentence Completion
Elizabeth played six musical instruments equally well;
her musical skills made her a valuable member
of the orchestra.
grandiose (B) residual (C) pristine
(D) fluent (E) versatile
Here is an example of a sample SAT sentence completion question the test our comprehension and vocabulary skills. Let’s read the sentence. If Elizabeth plays six instruments equally well, what word would you use to describe her musical skills? “diverse” or something like that? Yeah. Let’s look at the answer choices and see how they stack up. Does grandiose work with our word? No. What about residual? Nope. Pristine? Absolutely not. Fluent? Not really. We wouldn’t say someone has a fluent musical skill. Let’s cross it off. That leaves versatile. Does that match our word? Sure. That’s our answer.
On the SAT, There are 19 sentence completion questions and we have a strategy to help you attack them along with all the most important SAT words you need to know.

40. The Princeton Review Testing Timeline
When should you take the SAT?
Prepare to take it once, plan to take it twice, leave time to take it three times.
Take at least once or twice in spring of junior year (March, May or June).
You can repeat in October or November of senior year.

41. Why take the SAT more than once?
If you take the SAT multiple times, then you can send all of your scores and colleges will take your best score from each subject.
Make sure you prep each time you take the SAT.

42. College Admissions

43. College Admissions What’s important for college admissions?
HS Transcripts
Standardized test scores
High School GPA
Extracurricular activities

44. College Admissions Nine Factors Colleges Look For:
Student and college match
Challenging high school curriculum
Grades show an upward trend
Standardized test scores
Involvement demonstrating leadership
Out-of-school experiences illustrating responsibility, dedication and development
Essay and/or personal statement
Letters of recommendation
Resume

45. Q&A For official information from the test makers, visit:
CollegeBoard.com (SAT, PSAT, SAT Subject Tests, APs)
ACT.org
For other information from us:
Call Review
PrincetonReview.comw.princetonreview.com
For information about colleges:
Check out our best-selling guide: The Best 377 Colleges, 2013 Ed.
Visit PrincetonReview.com

46. Questions?
Leslie Robinson