Geraldine Woods - PSAT/NMSQT For Dummies

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ISBN 978-1-118-42429-2 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-118-42433-9 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-42431-5 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-118-42434-6 (ebk)

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About the Authors

Geraldine Woods has prepared students for the PSAT/NMSQT, both academically and emotionally, for the past three decades. She is the author of more than 50 books, including SAT For Dummies, English Grammar For Dummies, English Grammar Workbook For Dummies, Research Papers For Dummies, and College Admission Essays For Dummies, all published by Wiley. She lives in New York City with her husband and two parakeets.

Kristin Josephson survived the college admission process only to drop out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology 16 months later to attend circus school in San Francisco. While there, she studied flying trapeze, trampoline, and acrobatics. Kristin discovered her passion for teaching while she was tutoring in the Bay Area, a passion that led her to complete her degree at Colorado College. Kristin eventually became a teacher at a private school in New York City, where she has been teaching high school mathematics since 2007.

Dedication

From Gerri: For P and LG, together forever, and growing all the time.

Authors Acknowledgments

From Gerri: I appreciate the efforts of Alissa Schwipps, Todd Lothery, and Lindsay Lefevere of Wiley, as well as those of my agent, Lisa Queen. I am grateful for the close attention of my technical editors, Karen Berlin Ishii and Gail Lewis.

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Introduction

P SAT/NMSQT. Say that three times fast, and you sound like youre inhaling a particularly tangled strand of spaghetti. But no matter how you pronounce it, the PSAT/NMSQT is actually a key to your future, because its an exam that can open doors to college admissions and scholarships.

The word preliminary (the P in PSAT) hints at one important reason to take this test: You take the PSAT/NMSQT before the SAT, so when you hit the SAT, youve already sampled the test-taking experience. Knowing what to expect makes you more confident. Plus, the College Board (the organization that administers both tests) reports that students who take the PSAT/NMSQT on average score 146 points higher on the SAT than those who skip the preliminary exam. Because the top score on the SAT is 2400, 146 points is a significant chunk and can make a difference in your college application.

Another advantage of the PSAT/NMSQT is financial. When you take the test as a high-school junior, youre automatically entered into a number of scholarship competitions that the National Merit Scholarship Corporation runs. (If you take the test before junior year, you cant be considered for a scholarship, but you can retake the exam when youre eligible. The extra practice will most likely raise your score.) Besides its own National Merit Scholarships, the corporation awards National Achievement Scholarships to top-scoring African-American students. The same exam also gives test-takers a chance to enroll in the National Hispanic Recognition Program, which identifies outstanding Hispanic/Latino students and sends their names to colleges, boosting the odds that theyll be offered scholarships funded by these institutions. And as they say in TV infomercials thats not all! The PSAT/NMSQT is a gateway to other juicy scholarships financed by corporations, unions, and other organizations. How juicy? Awards range from a few hundred to many thousands of dollars.