This post applies to students who took the test in October 2019 (NMS Class of 2021).
The big news is that every state saw a drop in the qualifying score for the NMS Class of 2021, including five with a 4-point decline and one, South Dakota, with a 5-point decline.
“What is somewhat surprising is how sharp the difference is between the highest scoring states and everyone else,” writes Art Sawyer at Compassprep. “Of the 10 states at a cutoff of 221 or higher for the class of 2020, 8 saw only a 1-point decline. Illinois and Texas were the exceptions, with 2-point declines. The average decline among the other 40 states was 2.7 points.”
The selection index score is the sum of your three PSAT scores, maximum of 228. The first score listed is for 2021; the second was the score required for the class of 2020; and the third is the score for the class of 2019.
Alabama 212, 216, 216
Alaska 212, 213, 215
Arizona 218, 219, 220
Arkansas 212, 214, 214
California 221, 222, 223
Colorado 217, 220, 221
Connecticut 220, 221, 222
Delaware 219, 220, 222
Dist Columbia 222, 223, 223
Florida 216, 219, 219
Georgia 219, 220, 220
Hawaii 217, 219, 220
Idaho 214, 215, 214
Illinois 219, 221, 221
Indiana 215, 218, 219
Iowa 212, 215, 216
Kansas 218, 218, 219
Kentucky 214, 217, 218
Louisiana 212, 215, 217
Maine 213, 215, 217
Maryland 221, 222, 223
Massachusetts 222, 223, 223
Michigan 216, 219, 219
Minnesota 218, 219, 220
Mississippi 211, 214, 215
Missouri 214, 217, 217
Montana 210, 214, 214
Nebraska 213, 216, 216
Nevada 215, 218, 218
New Hampshire 215, 218, 219
New Jersey 222, 223, 223
New Mexico 211, 213, 215
New York 220, 221, 221
North Carolina 217, 219, 220
North Dakota 209, 212, 212
Ohio 215, 218, 219
Oklahoma 211, 214, 216
Oregon 217, 220, 221
Pennsylvania 217, 220, 220
Rhode Island 216, 218, 220
South Carolina 212, 215, 216
South Dakota 209, 214, 215
Tennessee 215, 219, 219
Texas 219, 221, 221
Utah 212, 215, 215
Vermont 212, 216, 216
Virginia 221, 222, 222
Washington 220, 221, 222
West Virginia 209, 212, 212
Wisconsin 213, 216, 216
Wyoming 209, 212, 212
Commended 209, 212, 211
Territories 209, 212, 211
International 222, 223, 223
To qualify for a National Merit Scholarship, the PSAT must be taken in the student’s junior year of high school. Many parents may not be aware that there is no single nationwide score on the PSAT that will qualify a student to become a NMS semifinalist, a critical preliminary step on the way to becoming a finalist and then perhaps a merit scholar.
Students are classified according to the state in which they attend high school, not the state of actual residence.
For more information about confirmation scores, please see PSAT Scoring and NMS (for a detailed explanation of scoring); The National Merit Journey: What You Need to Know, Part One; and The National Merit Journey Part Two: The Parent’s Role.
Semifinalists emerge from the top 3-4% of students (50,000 or so) taking the test, by virtue of the PSAT score alone. The top 3-4% of students earn “commended” status, and there is a national uniform score for commended students=209 for 2021. (See below for SAT equivalent.) Semifinalists, on the other hand, account for fewer than 1% of all students, or about 16,000 nationwide.
From these students, the merit scholar foundation, using state allocation levels, selects about 15,000 to become finalists; and from this group, about 9,000 are actually selected as merit scholars, based on both PSAT and SAT scores and a letter of recommendation from the high school principal. Therefore, many students who meet the semifinalist thresholds listed below do not go on to become finalists or merit scholars (two different things, though for some schools being a finalist is sufficient to earn support). We speculate that meaningful improvement on the SAT, taken in the spring of the junior year, relative to the PSAT score from the preceding October, may help in identifying students who go beyond finalist status and become merit scholars.
Each state has its own threshold PSAT score, which is the baseline for students to be considered as semifinalists in a given state. The scores vary widely for the NMS class of 2021, from 209 in West Virginia to 222 in the District of Columbia, Massachusetts, and New Jersey.
