Significantly Lower Scores on October 2019 PSAT – What Does That Mean?

I have been waiting for more than a month for a story about this test to hit outside of college counseling circles, but I still haven’t seen it anywhere. I have spoken to my clients that may be affected, but wanted to share this information more widely for all families. There were significantly lower scores on the October 2019 PSAT.   To date, the College Board, which administers the PSAT, has offered no explanation as to why.

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What Happened?

The average scores on this year’s PSAT dropped by 20-30 points, which is statistically, really really big. There was a huge drop in students scoring above 1400 as compared to previous years. The biggest impact seems to have been in the Math section, where there was a much steeper drop than the Verbal section.  Generally, the PSAT has yielded consistent score results year-to year, as any good test should.  The pool of test takers is essentially the same each year, which helps.  If there are any slight differences in difficulty, the test is scaled to account for that.

But this year, strangely, the number of Juniors scoring above 1400 dropped by 30%!  Students scoring above 1200 dropped by 15%.  And many fewer students scored in the typical range for National Merit scholarships.  Like most others in the college admissions world, I just don’t believe that the entire class of 2021 isn’t as strong in math as the classes that came before them. So, that means that there was likely a problem with the test itself.  Statisticians explain that this drop should not be confused with a standard error of measurement that occurs with all exams.

The issue came to light when many students got their scores and complained about the harsh scales on this year’s test.  The College Board uses a more “harsh” scale when the test is relatively easier.  The 2019 test seems to have been easier than expected which resulted in perfect reading scores increasing by 703 percent.  Perfect math scores also increased, but not by as much.  Students that made only one or two errors on the 2019 Reading and Writing sections received much lower scores, since they had to revise the scale to account for an easier test. The same thing happened on the Math section, though perfect scores weren’t as prevalent.

The College Board is fairly secretive about their tests, including the PSAT.  They don’t publicly reveal any internal discussions.  There are lots of theories that have floated around about the reasons for the lower scores.  Some are hypothesizing that the College Board is simply doing a score “re-set.”  But, other statisticians believe that there was actually a problem with one exam form.  The PSAT has different exam forms for different dates and situations.  The main test date is the one taken on a Wednesday (October 16 last year) at school, when 86% of sophomores and juniors take it.  That seems to be the one that’s the issue.

Why Does It Matter?

There are a variety of reasons that the drop in PSAT scores matters:  Many schools use the scores to track student progress and for placement into AP classes.  Students use it to try to predict what their SAT or ACT score ranges are likely to be and compare performance.  And finally, the junior year PSAT score determines National Merit scholarship selection, as well as millions in scholarships from colleges.  The latter is the major one that concerns many high school juniors.

For now, families of Juniors should know that the National Merit score cutoffs are likely to be slightly lower in most states than they have been for the past couple of years.  For families whose students had scores just below the presumed cutoff, this is potentially great news!  Art Sawyer of Compass Education Group reliably forecasts the anticipated score cut-offs for National Merit Semifinalists each year.  As always, there are differences between states.  But he says that overall, expect to see the cutoff drop by one to four index points as compared to last year.