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Evaluating PSATs: Preliminary Scholastic Aptitude Test

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By Ha-Eun Jeon

Tuesday, October 24, 2023. While the rest of the highschoolers get a day off, the sophomores and juniors faced another day in school. The reason? The PSAT. 

The PSAT is an exam the sophomores and juniors take every year. This year, the exam was taken digitally. This exam helps students prepare for the upcoming SATs, letting them experience how the exam works. The PSAT is also known as the NMSQT (National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test), if a high score is achieved in one’s junior year, a merit scholarship is rewarded to the individual. However, this scholarship only applies to United States citizens. Unlike the SAT, which is out of 1600, the PSAT is out of 1520. 

This year, most of the students found the math module more challenging (36.2%), than the reading and writing module (30.4%). 14.5% of the students found it both equally challenging and 18.8% of them did not find the modules challenging at all. 

With data collected form 34 juniors and 35 sophomores, 31.9% said that they felt fully prepared for the PSAT, 43.5% felt a little prepared, and 24.6% weren’t so prepared for the PSAT. Even though there were different preparation levels, surprisingly, the majority of the students did not find the PSAT as stressful. 53.6% of the students found it mildly stressful to not stressful at all, 21.7% of the students found the exam to be neutrally stressful, and 24.7% of the students found it very stressful. A junior, taking the exam for the second time stated, “It eased my nerves since I knew what was coming this time. Also, because it’s online, it felt a lot more ‘go at your own pace.’” 

The Digital PSAT is slightly shorter than the paper PSAT. The digital one takes around 2 hours and 14 minutes to complete, while the paper one took 2 hours and 45 minutes. The digital exam consists of 98 questions. 32 minutes for reading and writing module 1, 32 minutes for reading and writing module 2, 35 minutes for math module 1, and 35 minutes for math module 2. The paper exam consists of 129 questions. 60 minutes for evidence-based reading, 35 minutes for writing and language, 45 minutes for math with the calculator, and 25 minutes for math without the calculator. 

Warmest congratulations to the sophomores for completing their first PSAT and to the juniors for their last PSAT! 

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