PSAT Pattern

All about PSAT

The PSAT is commonly referred to as a “preliminary SAT,” and many students take it to get a head start on their SAT preparation. The PSAT is a standardised examination given to 11th-grade students in most high schools in the United States. In addition, the test acts as a prerequisite for students applying to the National Merit Scholarship Program. The PSAT and SAT may appear identical at times, however the SAT asks more challenging and advanced questions and includes an optional essay. If you do not do well on the writing section of the PSAT, you will need to concentrate hard on the vocabulary and grammar sections if you are taking the SAT. The PSAT test simulates the format, question types, topic, and time limits that students would encounter on the SAT.

How long is the PSAT?

The PSAT is frequently administered throughout the school day in place of other classes. The test itself lasts approximately 2 hours 14 minutes.

PSAT Test Dates 2024

The PSAT exam in India is generally conducted in October of every year.

Students scores will be released online and it will be dependent on the State from where the students are accessing.

What are the Different Sections of PSAT?

You will be given a composite score, two-section scores, and a variety of subsection scores. The test is divided into timed sections: Reading and Writing ,Math.

1. Reading and Writing Section Overview

The Reading and Writing section of the PSAT is designed to measure your success with building critical college and career readiness in literacy. In this section, you’ll answer multiple-choice questions requiring you to read, comprehend, and use information and ideas in texts; analyze the craft and structure of texts; revise texts to improve the rhetorical expression of ideas; and edit texts to follow core conventions of Standard English.

Passages in this section, which serve as the basis for answering test questions, represent the subject areas of literature, history/social studies, the humanities, and science. There is a single question per passage.

Questions in the Reading and Writing section represent one of four content domains (Craft and Structure, Information and Ideas, Standard English Conventions and Expression of Ideas ). To help you budget your time, questions that test similar skills and knowledge are grouped together and arranged from easiest to hardest. Pretest questions don’t count toward your score.

2. Math

The Math section of the PSAT is designed to measure your success with building critical college and career readiness knowledge and skills in math. It focuses on key elements of algebra, advanced math, problem-solving and data analysis, and geometry and trigonometry. Over the course of the Math section, you’ll answer multiple-choice and student-produced response questions that measure your fluency with, understanding of, and ability to apply the math concepts, skills, and practices that are most essential.

PSAT Exam Eligibility

PSAT Exam can be attempted once in a year. Undergraduate candidates can apply for the PSAT exam. Getting high scores in Junior years can make you eligible for the National Merit Scholarship so candidates prefer to give the PSAT in their 11th & 12th grade.

Test Format, Structure, and Types of Questions of PSAT

The students are being tested on the basis of a redesigned PSAT exam pattern. The new format also constitutes test reasoning skills focusing more on the development of knowledge and understanding, which is important for the success of any high school student.

The total duration of the test is 2 hours and 15 minutes. The structure of the PSAT Exam given below which includes sections, sub-section, time length of each section, number of questions and PSAT Exam Syllabus:

How the PSAT is scored?

Each correct answer on the PSAT exam contributes one point to your overall score. Remember that there is no penalty for guessing on the PSAT, so answer every multiple-choice question, even if you have to make a guess. The raw score will then be converted to the scaled score. This scaled score will be between 160 and 760 for each section, Evidence-Based Reading and Writing, and Math (there is no essay on the PSAT). Your composite score is the sum of the scaled scores from each section, thus it will range from 320 to 1520.

The College Board, which administers the test, uses a procedure known as “equating” to ensure that the scores are scaled equitably and that there is no advantage to taking the PSAT on a specific day. This means you can compare your results to someone who took the test on a different day than you. Furthermore, the correct answer choices are spread so that answers A–D are all equally likely. It is a fallacy that answer choice C is more frequently correct than the other options.