It lasted a little more than two hours with two math sections and two English sections. Like most of her friends and classmates, Brown prepared very little for this test. After all, there’s a reason it was called the Pre SAT. It’s just a practice test, right? It was just another in a long stream of tests she had taken, with the actual SAT looming ahead. This test would, however, be different.
Scores were released, and even Brown was surprised with the results. She cannot explain how she did so well. She considers herself truly lucky and attributes her good score to keeping calm and good guessing skills. However, her 4.52 GPA proves that she is extremely intelligent.
“It so happens that I actually scored slightly less on the actual SAT with months of studying and preparation than I did on this test. It all depends, I guess,” said Brown, who scored a 2200 on the actual SAT.
When the scores for the PSAT were announced, hers was in the 99th percentile. Every year, juniors across the country take the PSAT to qualify for National Merit Scholarships. The results usually help students see where they need to improve and can help predict future SAT scores, but Brown’s score did more. It qualified her as a National Merit Scholar Semi-finalist, and if she passes this round, many scholarship opportunities will open up for her in great universities across the nation.
She is one of only about 15,000 students across the U.S. to reach this level; the first from Aquinas since 2009; and the only student this year who attends school in San Bernardino to reach this level. Brown says that she’s sorry but she can’t offer much advice to juniors this year, since the new test is completely different. Her only advice is to just relax and figure out what you can and can’t do, so you can do the problems quickly and efficiently. Good luck to Brown in the next round and for all sophomores and juniors who will take the newly formatted test in October.