What’s a Good PSAT Score for 2023?

Calling the PSAT the annoying younger brother of the SAT is a bit unfair. While often irritating, younger brothers aren’t so bad overall; the PSAT, on the other hand, can feel like a confusing waste of time to many students. In this post, we’ll try to clear up some of that confusion for you by exploring what the PSAT is (and isn’t) used for; how scoring works, and what constitutes a ‘good’ PSAT score; and the changes coming to the PSAT for US-based students this fall. Let’s get started.

Test Structure of the PSAT
Is It Worth To Take the PSAT in 2023?
How The PSAT Is Scored
What’s An Average PSAT Score?
What’s a Good PSAT Score for 2023/2024?
Good PSAT Scores Compared to Previous Years
What’s Considered a Low PSAT Score?
How To Improve a Low PSAT Score
How To Check Your PSAT Score Results
Setting a PSAT Score Goal
How To Prepare For the PSAT
Learning From Your PSAT Scores
Frequently Asked Questions About the PSAT

An Overview of the PSAT

Test Structure, Now and Future

Let’s start with the basics. PSAT stands for ‘Preliminary SAT’, and you’ll often see the name paired with another acronym: NMSQT. In addition to being very fun to try to pronounce, NMSQT stands for ‘National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test’, which gives you a bit of a spoiler regarding the primary use of one level of the PSAT; we’ll talk more about that shortly.

As I alluded to above, there are actually three different levels of the PSAT, each corresponding to a grade or grades: the PSAT 8/9, the PSAT 10, and the PSAT/NMSQT (which is taken in 11th grade). Not all levels of the test are administered in every location; when I was in high school, for instance, I took the PSAT 10 and PSAT/NMSQT but was mercifully spared the need to take the test in 8th or 9th grade.

The PSAT is generally administered by schools during the school day, with the date depending on the level of test and the decision of the individual school. The PSAT 8/9 can be given in October or March/April of a particular school year; the PSAT 10 is administered in March/April only; and the PSAT/NMSQT is offered in October. Talk to your school counselor or advisor for more information about whether and when your school will be administering the PSAT.

Each version of the PSAT is currently structured roughly the same way in terms of the types and sequence of sections, with only the lengths of the individual sections varying slightly. Starting in fall of 2023, however, all versions of the PSAT will be shifting from paper-and-pencil tests to digital tests, which will be accompanied by significant structural changes to the tests themselves. See the tables below for more details about how the current versions of the PSAT suite compare to the forthcoming digital versions.

PSAT Structure Through Spring 2023

	PSAT 8/9	PSAT 10	PSAT/NMSQT
Reading	55 minutes 42 questions	60 minutes 47 questions	60 minutes 47 questions
Writing & Language	30 minutes 40 questions	35 minutes 44 questions	35 minutes 44 questions
Math No Calculator	20 minutes 13 questions (10 multiple-choice, 3 grid-in)	25 minutes 17 questions (13 multiple-choice, 4 grid-in)	25 minutes 17 questions (13 multiple-choice, 4 grid-in)
Math With Calculator	40 minutes 25 questions (21 multiple-choice, 4 grid-in)	45 minutes 31 questions (27 multiple-choice, 4 grid-in)	45 minutes 31 questions (27 multiple-choice, 4 grid-in)

PSAT Structure Starting Fall 2023

	PSAT 8/9	PSAT 10	PSAT/NMSQT
Reading and Writing	64 minutes 54 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules	64 minutes 54 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules	64 minutes 54 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules
Math	70 minutes 44 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules -Approximately 3:1 ratio of multiple-choice to grid-in	70 minutes 44 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules -Approximately 3:1 ratio of multiple-choice to grid-in	70 minutes 44 questions -Time and questions split evenly between two modules -Approximately 3:1 ratio of multiple-choice to grid-in

As a final note, there are also some differences in content between the various levels of the PSAT, with the lower levels of the test generally including less advanced math concepts and less challenging reading passages. All indications are that this will be true of the digital PSAT as well: College Board has already indicated that the PSAT 8/9 will not test trigonometry, for example.

Should I Take the PSAT in 2023?

Taking the PSAT can be valuable for a couple of reasons, but far and away the biggest benefit of taking the PSAT is that it can qualify you for the National Merit Scholarship Program (NMSP). Every year, the roughly 50,000 students who earned the highest scores on that year’s administration of the PSAT/NMSQT are selected for entry into the NMSP. Of those students, approximately one-third are chosen as Semifinalists; this designation is awarded to the highest-scoring testers from each of the 50 states, which means that the score threshold you must meet to progress to the Semifinalist stage can vary depending on your location.

At this point, students who are interested in becoming Finalists are required to complete several additional steps, such as obtaining a recommendation letter from their principal, writing a short essay, and taking the SAT or ACT to demonstrate the ability to replicate their PSAT scores. Roughly 15,000 will be chosen to progress to the Finalist stage, and then some 7,250 students from the pool of Finalists will be awarded an actual National Merit Scholarship.

National Merit Scholarships are a great thing to put on your college application (and the $2,500 monetary award doesn’t hurt, either); however, they are also very difficult to obtain, as you can tell from the multi-step process that I described above. It’s worth noting that there are other scholarships through the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) that students may be eligible for even if they miss out on being NMS Finalists; however, these scholarships are still dependent on your PSAT scores. Because of this, it’s typically not a great idea for students to commit a ton of time to preparing for the PSAT specifically unless they think they have a realistic shot at scoring extremely high. If test-taking isn’t your strongest skill, there are a ton of other scholarships that don’t use PSAT scores as an eligibility requirement!

Besides the possibility of getting a National Merit Scholarship, the other main benefit of the PSAT is as practice for future standardized tests. Because the PSAT is created by College Board, the organization which also administers the SAT, it contains the same question-types and content as the full SAT, which makes it a great way for students to get a taste of the test-day experience before they sit for the SAT. This is especially true for fall of 2023: because the PSAT will be administered in its new digital form for the first time, students will have the opportunity to get a sneak preview of what the SAT will look like going forward.

If you’re shooting for a National Merit Scholarship or interested in getting a test drive of the new SAT, taking the PSAT and aiming to get a good score may very well be worth it for you.

Understanding Your PSAT Score

How the PSAT is Scored

Scoring on the PSAT is reasonably complex, especially since it will be changing in fall of 2023 with the debut of the new digital test; even so, understanding how the scoring system works is the first step in deciding where to focus your time and effort while you prepare for the PSAT. Here’s what you need to know.

Raw PSAT Scores

First, you’ll receive a raw score for each of the two types of sections on the PSAT (Reading & Writing and Math); each raw score is simply equal to the number of questions you answered correctly in that section. This is the part of the post where I remind you that no penalty is applied for incorrect answers on the PSAT, so you should always always always answer every question, even if it’s a total guess. If you don’t at least guess, you’re functionally leaving a quarter of a point on the board for every multiple-choice problem you don’t answer.

Scaled PSAT Scores

After your raw scores are tabulated, the College Board will convert them into scaled scores; this is where things get fun.

The new PSAT is a section-adaptive test. This means that for each of the two section-types (Reading & Writing and Math), the first module will contain questions of a range of difficulty levels in order to allow the system to assess the student’s ability; then, the second module of each section-type will be constructed by the testing algorithm based on the individual student’s performance on the first module. Basically, if you crush the first Math module, you can expect to see harder questions on the second; if you struggle with the first module, your second module will contain easier problems.

What does this mean for scoring? It’s complicated, and also not entirely clear, since organizations that administer adaptive tests are typically quite close-mouthed about their algorithms. I can say this, though: based on testing we’ve done with the adaptive practice tests that have been released by College Board thus far, your score appears to depend quite heavily on your performance in the first module.

In one practice test, getting every question wrong in the first module of each section-type and then getting every question correct in the second module earned a score of 880; reversing that pattern (every question correct in each first module and incorrect in each second) earned a score of 1100. This is a massive difference considering that in each instance, we got the same number of questions correct; all we changed was the distribution between modules.

That’s obviously only one data point, and we won’t be able to draw any concrete conclusions about scoring for the new PSAT until we see the first few waves of results. Regardless of the intricacies of score calculation, however, we can say confidently that at the end of all of this calculation, scaled scores for each of the two sections will range from 120 to 720 for the PSAT 8/9 and from 160 to 760 for the PSAT 10 and PSAT/NMSQT.

Composite PSAT Score

Finally, your two scaled scores will be added together to produce an overall composite score that ranges from 240 to 1440 for the PSAT 8/9 and 320 to 1520 for the PSAT 10 and PSAT/NMSQT. This score is the best single measure of your performance on the test, and a version of this score will be used in determining your eligibility for a National Merit Scholarship (if applicable).

What’s a Good PSAT Score in 2023?

Now that you have a firm grasp on how to interpret PSAT scores, let’s return to the central question of this post: what’s a good PSAT score?

As you might expect, the answer to this question varies from student to student. If you’re aiming for a National Merit Scholarship, you’ll need to hit a very high bar. Your NMSQT Selection Index on the current PSAT/NMSQT is calculated by adding together your section scores on Reading, Writing & Language, and Math, then multiplying that total by two; each of those section scores has a ceiling of 38, which means that the highest NMSQT Selection Index value you can achieve is 228. In the most recent NMSC data, qualifying scores ranged from “only” 207 to as high as 223 (sorry, New Jersey students and Washington, DC students, y’all are overachievers).

For students who are using the PSAT as practice for future tests, your definition of “good” PSAT scores will be different. You might be looking to improve on the scores you’ve been earning on your practice tests during your SAT prep; alternatively, you might not even want to worry about the scores and instead just focus on using the PSAT as an initial exposure to the test-day experience. Because PSAT scores aren’t used for college admissions outside of qualifying you for scholarships, there’s not really a right or wrong answer to this question.

If you’re looking for information about general trends in PSAT scoring, read on for more information.

What’s the average score on the PSAT?

If you want to get a general picture of where your scores stand relative to those of other students, check out the College Board’s most recent data on nationwide score percentiles. Or, if you don’t feel like analyzing a table, here are some selected benchmark composite scores and their associated percentiles to give you a rough sense of how the numbers shake out overall.

PSAT/NMSQT (11th grade)

1520: 99th percentile
1500: 99th percentile
1400: 97th percentile
1300: 91st percentile
1200: 81st percentile
1100: 66th percentile
1000: 48th percentile
900: 30th percentile

PSAT 10

1520: 99th percentile
1500: 99th percentile
1400: 99th percentile
1300: 97th percentile
1200: 92nd percentile
1100: 81st percentile
1000: 66th percentile
900: 47th percentile

PSAT 8/9 (8th grade; 9th grade)

1440: 99th percentile; 99th percentile
1400: 99th percentile; 99th percentile
1300: 99th percentile; 99th percentile
1200: 98th percentile; 96th percentile
1100: 95th percentile; 89th percentile
1000: 87th percentile; 77th percentile
900: 73rd percentile; 59th percentile
800: 51st percentile; 38th percentile

Though this isn’t enough information to calculate a specific nationwide average score on the PSAT, we can say that the median, or 50th percentile, score on the PSAT/NMSQT is somewhere between 1000-1100. This means that if you score a 1050 or so on the PSAT, you’ve likely done as well as or better than roughly half of the people who have taken the test in the past three years.

What’s a good PSAT score in 2023 compared to previous years?

Each year, the College Board releases data on the PSAT performance of the graduating class for that year. Below is a summary of mean composite PSAT/NMSQT scores, as reported by College Board, for each year since the PSAT’s redesign alongside the SAT in 2016.

2017: 973
2018: 969
2019: 969
2020: 960
2021: 1002
2022: 952

As you can see, the average PSAT score has stayed reasonably consistent over the past six years, with the overall trend being a slight decline. Based on the data, a good PSAT score in 2023 is very similar to that of previous years. And don’t forget: your goal for a PSAT score should be dictated largely by your scholarship and testing priorities.

What’s considered a low PSAT score?

All of this information is nice and all, but let’s start narrowing the focus and thinking about your scores in particular. When evaluating the strength of your PSAT score for admissions purposes, your biggest concern should be how it compares to the statistics for incoming freshman at the colleges or universities in which you’re interested. College Board advertises that PSAT scores can be interpreted as a reasonably accurate estimate of the score you could expect to earn on the SAT, which means that they can be rough barometers of how much work you might need to put into improving your SAT score.

If you want to get a sense of how your scores line up, go to the admissions websites of any colleges in which you think you might be interested. Almost all schools include the median SAT score for their most recent admitted class of freshmen, which can provide a helpful goal for you to aspire to. If your PSAT score is below that 50th percentile score for a school to which you’re looking to apply, that’s okay! Remember that you have time to raise your SAT score through practice.

How can I improve a low PSAT score?

We’ll cover some specific test-taking tips later in this post, but as a general paradigm, I like to boil PSAT score improvement down to three primary steps:

Practice both content and strategy. Remember that this test doesn’t just assess what you’ve learned in school, it also tests your test-taking skills.
Make sure that you’re getting in plenty of reps with full timed sections. Being able to answer a single question on your bed with music playing is great; on the test, though, you’ll be expected to solve a ton of problems back-to-back while under time pressure. Make sure you’re familiar with that experience before the day of the test.
Review your mistakes. Practice is only as good as what you learn from it. Build in time to review the questions you miss in each section, and make sure you know why your answer was wrong and why the correct answer was better.

How to Check Your PSAT Scores

To check your PSAT scores, you’ll first need to log into your College Board account. Once you’re in, simply select ‘My SAT’ from the menu near the top of the page and then scroll down. You should see a section titled ‘My Scores’ right below the portion of the page that shows your upcoming test dates. Here you’ll be able to see your composite scores for all the PSAT administrations you’ve sat for, as well as a breakdown of your section scores.

PSAT Target Scores and Preparation in 2023

Whether you’re prepping for the PSAT in an attempt to earn a National Merit Scholarship or using PSAT prep as a gateway into studying for the SAT, the first step is to determine roughly what score you should be aiming for. If a National Merit Scholarship is your goal, take a look at the NMSC document I linked earlier in the post for a general sense of the bar to achieve Semifinalist status in your state.

If you don’t think a National Merit Scholarship is realistic for you, or if you don’t have the time in the short-term to dedicate to extensive PSAT prep, then you should be thinking about the PSAT more as an introduction to the SAT. College Board advertises that PSAT scores can be interpreted as a reasonably accurate estimate of the score you could expect to earn on the SAT, which means that they can act as barometers of how much work you might need to put into improving your SAT score. Let’s explore this part of the process more closely.

How to Set a Good PSAT Score Goal for 2023

One of the best things you can do prior to starting your PSAT prep is to set a target score, as knowing what score you’re aiming to attain can clarify your approach to the prep process. As I mentioned above, one of the benefits of taking the PSAT is that scores map directly onto SAT scores, which means that the PSAT can act as an excellent practice test for students preparing for the SAT. Setting a PSAT score goal, then, can really be thought of more as setting a benchmark goal on your way to achieving your target SAT score; this means that the more important question to ask yourself is ‘what’s a good SAT score for me?’

The answer to this question depends in large part on what schools you’re interested in applying to. For instance, if you need a 1400 to be a competitive applicant to your target schools, you can get there with a 750 in Math and a 650 in Verbal or vice versa; which area of the test you choose to focus more on will likely depend on your strengths and weaknesses. On the other hand, if you need a 1550 to stand out from the crowd of applicants, you’re going to need to be very close to perfect in every section of the test.

The first step to setting an SAT score goal, then, is creating a list of schools to which you’re planning to apply. Which leads us nicely to…

Making a List of Schools You Want to Attend

I am neither an admissions expert nor a college counselor, so the first thing I’ll say here is that you should absolutely talk to the counselor(s) at your school, or an independent Educational Consultant, to get information on and help with generating this list. Here are some of the biggest things that I recommend students think about as they start to sort through all of the college options available to them, however.

Size: Are you looking for a school where you regularly recognize people while walking around campus or one where you’re guaranteed to encounter someone new every day?
Location: Close to home or farther away? Warm-weather school or cold-weather school?
Setting: Do you want to step out of your dorm and be in the middle of a bustling city, or would you prefer a school with its own campus and a quieter surrounding environment?
Academic Specialty: Does the college or university specialize in an academic area you already know you’re passionate about? Or are you still figuring out your interests and want to make sure you have plenty of options?
Social Culture: Is everybody at the football game on a Saturday? Do 85% of students participate in Greek life? How does this line up with your social preferences?
Likelihood of Being Accepted: Based on the school’s admissions percentages and the strength of your application, is this a reach school, target school, or safety school for you?

Your college counselor or EC can provide you with a ton of resources to help you answer these questions, and they’ll also talk through the process with you—there’s no need to go it alone.

Determining Those Schools’ SAT Score Requirements

Once you’ve started to assemble your list of schools, the next step is to get information on the way each one uses the SAT in admissions. Here are the questions you should be answering for each institution:

Is the school test-optional, test-blind, or test-required?
Does the school superscore if you submit results from multiple SAT administrations?
What are the 25th and 75th percentile composite scores for admitted students?

Most if not all schools have this information on the admissions portion of their websites. If you don’t see it, talk to your college counselor or contact that school’s admissions department directly.

How to Prepare to Get a Good Score on the PSAT in 2023

We’ve talked about how to figure out roughly what composite score you need to hit; now, you’re ready to start preparing. What are some of the things you should be focusing on as you start working towards getting a high enough PSAT score to meet your needs?

Taking Practice Tests

Earlier, I mentioned the importance of getting in timed reps with the test material, and I really can’t stress this enough. The structure and timing of the test are part of the challenge of the test, and it’s essential that you get comfortable with both before test day. Practice tests provide an opportunity for you to practice the content and strategy you’ve been working on in the context of full test sections, and they also give you a benchmark score that you can use to measure your progress.

Unfortunately, we’re in something of an awkward spot right now with PSAT/SAT materials. Because the PSAT is shifting to its digital version in fall of 2023 and the SAT is following suit in spring of 2024, there exists a limited amount of genuine practice material at the time of writing. You can find four free adaptive SAT practice tests on the College Board’s website, as well as four non-adaptive, “linear” practice tests; unfortunately, there are currently no practice digital PSATs available, and you will probably even notice some question overlap between the linear tests and the adaptive tests. College Board has stated that they’ll be releasing more digital practice material throughout the year, so keep an eye out.

Partnering with a PSAT/SAT Tutor

Oh hey, it’s the part of the post where I try to write objectively about my job. My favorite.

Let’s start with the benefits of a 1:1 tutor versus a prep course. For most students, personalized instruction is simply a more effective way to learn. Having someone who can answer your questions on the spot and walk through in detail any concepts you’re struggling with is a huge benefit. Additionally, any tutor worth their salt will tweak their approach as needed to cater to your individual strengths and weaknesses, which typically makes prep more efficient.

The downside to partnering with a PSAT/SAT tutor is pretty simple: cost. Most tutors charge by the hour as opposed to charging a flat fee, and depending on the hourly rate, you will almost always be on the hook for significantly more of a financial outlay than you would if you opted for a prep course, for instance. Many tutors will work with families to devise a prep plan that is as efficient as possible in order to optimize the cost-to-results ratio, but there’s no getting around the fact that tutors are expensive.

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As a final note, one middle ground that you can investigate is the hybrid course. These prep courses consist mainly of classroom or independent work but include a certain number of 1:1 instructional hours within the initial cost; this creates a more financially feasible option that still provides some amount of personalized instruction.

Section-Specific Tips

As I’ve mentioned multiple times, the PSAT is shifting its structure and content pretty drastically in fall of 2023. This means that many of the best strategies for the PSAT in the past are no longer partially relevant, and we don’t yet have enough released practice tests for the new version of the PSAT/SAT to be able to formulate a significant body of section-specific tips. Based on the material available, however, I’ve included a couple of general tips to guide your PSAT practice for the digital PSAT debuting in fall of 2023.

Reading and Writing: Don’t read more than you have to. I know this may sound strange, considering that the amount of text in this section is significantly smaller than on the Verbal sections of the old PSAT; however, as little as there is to read for each question, you can usually get away with reading even less. For questions that ask you to support a researcher’s hypothesis, for instance, focus first on the portions of the passage that describe the actual hypothesis; don’t read the contextual information unless you have to. For the notes synthesis questions, look for the bullet points that relate directly to what the question is asking you. You can always read more if necessary, but you can’t get back time wasted absorbing unnecessary information.
Math: USE. THE. CALCULATOR. The new version of the PSAT/SAT includes a Desmos graphing calculator that is built into the testing app. This is incredibly helpful for a wide variety of problems, as it makes graphing equations and finding intercepts or intersection points a total breeze. System of equations question? Graph it. Finding the zeroes of a quadratic? Graph it. Finding the equation of a line that’s parallel to a given line? You guessed it—graph it. On the new version of this test, the calculator is your best friend; look for ways to let it do the heavy lifting for you.

Learning from Your PSAT Scores

Once you’ve taken the PSAT and gotten your scores back, the next question for most students is ‘now what?’ As we’ve discussed, PSAT scores in and of themselves are not particularly valuable unless you’re one of the very small subset of students who is shooting for a National Merit Scholarship or other related scholarship. For most testers, the PSAT is practice for a future standardized test that actually matters for college admissions—either the SAT or the ACT.

If you’re taking the PSAT in the middle of preparing for the SAT, then think of your PSAT scores as a good benchmark to measure your progress (note that this is less true this year than it will be in the future, as the PSAT will be shifting to the digital version of the test several months before the SAT does the same). If you’re taking the PSAT before starting your SAT/ACT prep, on the other hand, then there are a few ways the PSAT experience can help you with that process. Here are some questions for you to ask yourself upon receiving your PSAT scores.

Did you like the new digital format? If the PSAT is the precursor to your ACT/SAT test prep, then you’ll almost certainly be taking the digital SAT if you choose that test over the ACT. Because the ACT is still a paper-and-pencil test at the time of writing, this simple, practical question can help you choose which test will be better for you. Do you find that you work better with a paper test or the new digital SAT? The answer will play a sizable role in deciding between these two tests.
Were your scores in a high percentile range? Because the ACT and SAT will be diverging in 2024 more than they ever have in the past, your PSAT score can be a strong indicator of which test might be better for you. The fact that PSAT scores map directly onto SAT scores means that if you scored relatively high on the PSAT, there’s a good chance that you’d be starting from a position of strength when preparing for the SAT. That’s a definite factor to consider when choosing between the two tests.
How did your scores compare in Reading & Writing and Math? This question is important regardless of whether you choose to prepare for the ACT or the SAT, as it gives you a sense of where you should be focusing your time and energy during the prep process. If your R&W score was significantly higher than your Math, you know you have substantially more work to do in the latter section.

An Important Caveat

Though strong SAT scores can be a powerful component of your college application, they’re not the only component or even the most important component. Remember, it is not merely your test scores that determine whether you are granted admission to a given college. The application process is a holistic one: admissions officers also weigh your grades, extracurricular activities, and application essays, and those should not be neglected in favor of a single-minded emphasis on testing. Test preparation is work, and it’s not the only thing that matters; at some point, you are better off focusing on other parts of your application if you’re hitting a plateau with your test scores.

What’s a Good PSAT Score: Wrapping Things Up

If you’re still reading at this point, congratulations—I stopped about 1,000 words ago. The last thing to do is wrap everything up with a nice little TL;DR bow.

PSAT scores are important for two reasons: they can qualify you for a National Merit Scholarship or associated scholarship if you score very high, and they can act as a helpful source of information during the process of preparing for the SAT/ACT. Beyond that, though, they mean very little, so make sure you’re not stressing yourself out too much trying to ace the PSAT. And finally, do remember that the test will be making a significant shift this year (fall of 2023) as a precursor to the new SAT, which debuts in 2024. Because of this, strategies and materials that previously applied to the PSAT may not be relevant anymore; make sure you’re preparing for the correct test!

On that note, if you’re looking for someone to help guide you through the process of preparing for the PSAT and then the SAT/ACT, give us a shout; we know some people who can help.

What’s A Good PSAT Score: Frequently Asked Questions

What is a good PSAT score for Ivy League?

Remember, PSAT scores themselves aren’t used during the admissions process; they’re simply predictors of SAT/ACT scores, which are the ones that actually count for your college application. If you’re wondering what a good SAT score is for Ivy League or what a good ACT score is for Ivy League, you’re in luck: I’ve written articles answering both of those questions, and the links are earlier in this sentence.

What PSAT score qualifies for scholarships?

As we discussed earlier, the answer to this question varies depending on the year and the state in which you live. Check out the NMSC’s data to see what PSAT scores qualified for the most recent National Merit Scholarship; you can also find information on the NMSC website about other associated scholarships for which your PSAT scores can qualify you.

Can you get a full-ride scholarship from the PSAT?

National Merit Scholarships themselves are not full-ride scholarships; the monetary award attached to an NMS is $2,500. There are other scholarships that are attached to PSAT scores, however: Corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards and Collegiate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards. NMSC’s website states that, “Within guidelines established by NMSC, corporate sponsors select the monetary arrangements for the scholarships they finance.” Thus, though I expect it’s quite unlikely that any of those awards would go so far as to be a full-ride scholarship, there doesn’t appear to be anything stating that it’s impossible.