Are the PSATs harder than the SATs?

[Erudite]

Hey all!

As the thread title says: Are the PSATs considered harder to score in than the SATs? A lot of my seniors in school said that peeps do much better in the actual SATs compared to the PSATs. That got me wondering.

Also, what is considered a good PSAT score? And is a score of like 229 a good enough indicator for high achievement on like the real SAT?

Thanks for your input!

IDOLS

[dubyawhy]

To be honest it's easier. The only reason seniors get higher in the SAT is because its much more important, and thus they spend ALOT more time studying for it. I dont know of ONE person in my entire school who studied for the PSAT for more than a couple of days. Everyone spent more or less a month doing SAT practice though.

I studied for quite a while on the PSAT to try and get the national merit scholarship, and I got 231 in my PSAT. I ended up with a 2280 on the SAT, but one more correct math question would have given me a 2310, so adding a 0 onto your score should give you a "close enough" value for your SAT score, though in most cases you can try to push for another 50pts. I'm guessing PSATs scores are very correlated to SAT scores, with the only difference being the time spent studying for them.

[Erudite]

Thanks! That makes a lot of sense.

[Matsu]

I also think a major factor is that extra year of education, writing essays, reading crappy books you don't like and doing math problems improves your skillset much further. You can generally look to improve your PSAT score by at least 200 points (after you add a zero at the end) if you actually bother to take the time to study hard and drill for the SATs. I only got 180 in my PSAT, but I ended up being able to boost my score to 2100 in the actual SATs (after my second time taking the test though, first time I got a little over 2000). Good luck and study hard!