The PSAT: what it is for, where the official practice test is, how to study for it, and how to read the score report as your first SAT error log

The PSAT is the College Board's preliminary SAT: a test in the same digital format, taken in school in Grade 10 or 11, that does two things. It gives you a score report in the same shape as the SAT's, which is the most useful diagnostic you will get for free, and in Grade 11 it is the qualifying test for the National Merit Scholarship program. Here is what it is for, where the official practice test is, how to study for it without over-studying, and how to turn the score report into your first SAT error log.

What the PSAT is, and the three versions

Three tests share the name, and all three were read on the test-maker's own pages on the day this page was last reviewed.

• The PSAT/NMSQT is taken in the fall, by Grade 11 students and many Grade 10s. It is the one that enters the scholarship program. Its total score runs from 320 to 1520, each section from 160 to 760.
• The PSAT 10 is the same test given in the spring to Grade 10 students, on the same 320 to 1520 scale, with no scholarship entry.
• The PSAT 8/9 is for Grade 8 and 9 students, given in the fall or the spring, on a lower scale, 240 to 1440.

All three run in the digital adaptive format of the SAT: two sections, Reading and Writing first and then Math, each split into two timed modules, with the second module harder or easier depending on how you did on the first. The PSAT/NMSQT has 98 questions over about 2 hours 14 minutes, 54 in Reading and Writing in 64 minutes and 44 in Math in 70, which is the SAT's own count and timing. The digital SAT's format is described in full on the SAT page; everything there is true of the PSAT except the scale.

The scales are built to sit beside the SAT's. A 500 in Math on the PSAT/NMSQT is meant to mean the same level of skill as a 500 in Math on the SAT; the PSAT's ceiling is lower because its hardest questions are not as hard.

What it is for: two jobs

The diagnostic. The score report gives a section score for Reading and Writing and for Math, and under each, a bar for every one of eight content domains, with how many questions the domain carried and how you did on it. That is an error log drawn for you, a year before the SAT counts. It is the most useful thing the test produces, for almost every student who sits it.

The scholarship. In Grade 11 the PSAT/NMSQT is the entry test for the National Merit Scholarship program, which is run by a separate corporation, not the College Board. The corporation reads a Selection Index computed from your section scores: twice the Reading and Writing score plus the Math score, divided by ten. Students above a qualifying level, which the corporation sets each year and which is not the same everywhere, go on to the later stages of the program. The qualifying level is not typed on this page because it changes; the corporation's own guide is the place to read it. One honest sentence: the group this concerns is small, and for most students the diagnostic is the value of the test.

What it is not. A score colleges see. The PSAT does not go on an application.

Where the official PSAT practice test is

The test-maker publishes official PSAT practice on its own practice pages, in the same app the real test runs in, beside the SAT's full-length tests. Start there, and check what is offered today, because the number of forms changes.

The SAT's official full-length practice tests are also fair preparation for the PSAT, and they are the place to go when the PSAT forms are used up. The format is the same: the same sections, the same modules, the same timing, the same skills. The content is pitched a little harder. A PSAT candidate who takes an SAT form reads the same error log, and a miss on an SAT form is a miss the PSAT could also have given.

Nothing from a third party for the diagnostic. A prep company's "PSAT practice test" is a model of the test built from the outside; the official forms are the test, and they are free.

How to study for the PSAT, without over-studying

The PSAT is a diagnostic, so study for it in proportion: one or two practice tests and the error log from them, not a six-month plan. The six-month plan belongs to the SAT, and the PSAT's report is where it starts.

A fortnight is the right size, and it is the hub's method compressed:

1. Day 1: one official practice test under time. One sitting, the official timing, the phone in another room, scored the same day.
2. Day 1, evening: the log by skill. For every miss and every guess, the skill, the kind of error (did not know, slipped, ran out of time) and the fix.
3. Days 2 to 13: the top three skills. Each one by worked example, cold redo and a sibling problem, then mixed sets in which the skill is shuffled with the other two, and self-testing with the notes closed. Rohrer and Taylor (2007) found that students who practised problem types shuffled did worse during practice and better on a later test than students who practised in blocks; the PSAT shuffles.
4. Day 14: the test. Sleep the night before.

A Grade 11 aiming at the scholarship's qualifying level adds a second practice test a week before the real one and borrows the SAT calendar: full tests two weeks apart, drilling between. Everyone else stops at the fortnight. The last seven days are chapter 9 of the free playbook as a calendar.

How to read the score report as an error log

This is the page's heart, because the report is the one thing every PSAT student gets and almost nobody uses.

The report shows your two section scores and, under each, the eight content domains the test-maker groups its questions into. In Reading and Writing: information and ideas; craft and structure; expression of ideas; standard English conventions. In Math: algebra; advanced math; problem-solving and data analysis; geometry and trigonometry. For each, the report says roughly how many questions it carried and how you performed on it, as a band, not a score.

Turn the report into a log in three steps:

1. Each domain marked weakest becomes a row. Write the domain's name and, under it, the skills inside it that you remember stumbling on. The domain "standard English conventions", for instance, holds punctuation, agreement, verb tense and pronoun case; you know which one it was.
2. Guess the kind of error from your memory of the test and mark it as a guess. The next practice test confirms or corrects it.
3. Compute the gap, then stop using it. Take the SAT total your target programs report, subtract your PSAT total, and divide across the two sections: that is points per section to find. Then replace the number with skills. One practice test later, the per-skill count is the plan, and the points are what it will produce.

The time you have is the plan's natural length. From an October PSAT in Grade 11 to a spring SAT is about five to seven months, which is long enough for every weak skill to be visited on several separate days. Cepeda and colleagues (2008) found that the best gap between two visits to the same material grows with the time until the test; over months, that means a skill comes back every week or two rather than every day. The spaced plan across months has the table, and a month per two skills is a fair pace.

Worked example: one score report read, one plan written

Our own invented report, not a real one. A Grade 11 scores 490 in Reading and Writing and 560 in Math, a total of 1050. The report marks "standard English conventions" and "expression of ideas" weakest in the first section and "algebra" weakest in the second.

The log, from memory of the test and marked as guesses:

Section	Domain	Skill remembered	Error kind (guess)	Fix
Reading and Writing	Standard English conventions	Commas between two full sentences; subject–verb agreement	Did not know	Rule cards, then ten sentences cold
Reading and Writing	Expression of ideas	Transitions	Slipped: chose the word that sounded right	Name the relationship before reading the choices
Math	Algebra	Linear functions from a table: slope and intercept	Did not know	One worked example, redo cold, a sibling

The arithmetic: the student's target programs report SAT totals around 1300. The gap is 1300 − 1050 = 250 points. Spread across two sections, that is 125 points a section to find, and the report says where to look. Then the number is set aside: three skills is the plan, and the first practice SAT in January measures how many points the three skills were worth.

The plan: the first two skills from the four sentence faults, as rule cards recalled daily and applied to ten sentences cold; the third by worked examples, one slowly, then cold, then a sibling with new numbers. A practice SAT in January to measure, then two more before the spring date, two weeks apart, with drilling between.

PSAT vs SAT: what carries over

Everything but the scale. The same format, the same sections, the same number of questions and the same timing; the same skills, tested by the same kinds of question. The PSAT's questions are pitched a little easier, and its top score is 1520 rather than 1600.

So a PSAT score is not an SAT prediction. It is a position on the same ruler a year earlier. What carries over exactly is the mistakes: the skill you lacked in October is the skill you lack in March unless you work on it, and the SAT will ask about it in the same way. That is why the log matters more than the number, and why the report is worth an evening.

The PSAT, on one screen

• Three versions: the PSAT/NMSQT in the fall (Grade 11, many Grade 10s), the PSAT 10 in the spring, the PSAT 8/9 for younger students; all in the SAT's digital adaptive format.
• Two jobs: a diagnostic in the SAT's own shape, and in Grade 11 the entry test for the National Merit Scholarship program. Colleges do not see it.
• Official practice: the test-maker's own forms in its app, then the SAT's.
• A fortnight: one practice test, the log, two weeks on the top three skills, the test.
• The report as a log: eight content domains, the weakest becoming rows; the gap computed once, then replaced by skills.