Admissions Academy Blog

Reconsidering the PSAT’s role in National Merit Scholarships

•  Posted by Sarah Ziegler on April 20th, 2009 in Articles of Interest
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Today, the National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC) detailed its follow-up conversations with the College Board, ACT, and National Merit Scholarship Corporation. NACAC engaged the testing organizations in response to a September report from its Commission on the Use of Standardized Tests, examining the role of standardized tests in college admissions. One of the crucial recommendations from the report involves reevaluating the use of PSAT scores as the sole initial selection criteria for awarding National Merit Scholarships. NACAC expressed concerns that this use of the PSAT is not an appropriate use of standardized tests and unfairly excludes socioeconomically disadvantaged students from competition for aid money.

In comments today, NACAC said that the responses it received from the College Board and National Merit Scholarship Corporation did not go far enough to address concerns about the use (or misuse) of the PSAT, arguing that students should be allowed alternate ways to show “merit” than one standardized test measure. The University of California system pulled its support for parts of the National Merit Scholarship program over this same concern, citing that the use of the PSAT alone as a merit measure was not consistent with its admissions philosophy.

Read NACAC’s press release here and a report by the Chronicle of Higher Education here.

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