Last Friday, commended students of the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT) received letters congratulating them for their success and inviting them to pick up their certificates from the counseling portable. Semifinalist students were notified slightly earlier.

This year, Skyline High School produced two semifinalists; Garrett Black and Daryl Hansen. Both had their academic efforts awarded with respective scores of 217 and 235 out of a total of 240. Hansen later went on to score 2290 on his SAT and a perfect 36 on his ACT.

Garrett Black (left) poses with Daryl Hansen on the annual IB Humanities Trip to the UW Libraries.

Photo Credit: Hannah Weeks

When asked about his achievement, Black exclaimed that he felt great about being a semifinalist and looked forward to possibly becoming a finalist as 15,000 of the 16,000 nationwide semifinalists move on to achieve finalist status. Black’s exuberance is understandable; PSAT finalists are eligible for not only the National Merit Scholarship but also university and corporate-sponsored scholarships.

However, not everybody looks upon the PSAT as a door-opening catalyst. Commended student Audrey Harker remarked, “I feel like the PSAT was a dumb test and I really don’t care that I got a commended student award.”

Whatever the case be, history shows that students have taken the PSAT very seriously, perhaps too seriously in some cases. Last year, Karen Dillard College Prep in Plano, Texas charged $2,300 from each student for standardized test preparation services and was shown to have possibly given students practice with the actual PSAT being offered that year after the principle of Jasper High School was charged with sending a copy of last year’s PSAT to his brother working at Karen Dillard College Prep.

College Board is currently conducting an investigation that will determine whether or not students that attended Karen Dillard College Prep will have their PSAT scores thrown out.

Besides expensive preparation programs, how can students make sure they are ready? Black revealed that he went through seven practice tests, many done at school during his lunch, before taking the PSAT. Such dedication certainly paid off when Black managed to achieve semifinalist status despite being sick with a cold on test day. So sick that he missed the day of school before.

How do we measure up to everybody else in Washington and the whole nation? In our state, the PSAT powerhouse was certainly Seattle’s private Lakeside School, which produced a whopping 30 semifinalists for last year’s PSAT.

As far as the general trend is concerned, the going seems to be getting tougher as Washington had a PSAT semifinalist cutoff score of 217 for last year’s PSAT, a 2 point increase from the preceding year’s 215.

Despite the challenging upward trend in PSAT cutoff scores, I am confident that Skyline’s undaunted juniors will achieve success when they face the PSAT on October 18th. Good luck to all, and make Skyline proud!