Counselors need to hand back PSAT scores before the Holiday break

SAT tutor Brian McElroy makes a very good point about the timing of PSAT results:

So local high school guidance counselors are finally starting to hand back PSAT booklets!

Although counselors usually receive the test results in December, many schools wait until January to distribute the results to students. Some of these schools also refuse to hand out the booklets themselves until finals are over.

I can only guess that the reason for this delay is that counselors would prefer that their students focus on their classes until final exams are over. It’s a good idea in principle, but it seems a little authoritarian to me. Students should already know that grades are just as important as SAT scores, so they shouldn’t be forced to wait another month in order to see what they got wrong on the PSAT. Just my two cents.

It simply isn’t fair to drop PSAT scores on students a mere five or six weeks before the March SAT, because this small window does not allow a student the time to adequately prepare for the March SAT nor the time to decide whether even to take the March test in the first place.

Results from the PSAT are extremely useful for pinpointing specific areas of weakness, both in overall subject categories as well as in individual topics within these categories. Yet post-Holiday score reporting makes it difficult to take full advantage of this realistic appraisal in time for the March test. The lack of PSAT score and test booklet information during the Holiday break also means that students who wish to use the time off from regular classes to study for the SAT are basically flying blind.

What’s more, the October PSAT is probably the most important indicator for determining whether a student should even take the SAT for the first time in March, or alternatively wait until the May test in order to develop the skills the student needs to succeed. Yet because the deadline for registering for the March SAT is in late January, a student who receives PSAT scores after the Holidays does not get the information early enough to make an informed, non-hurried decision about when to take the SAT for the first time.

Bottom line: because non-timely reporting of scores negates much of the usefulness of the PSAT as an SAT prep tool, high school counselors who fail to provide PSAT scores before the Holiday break are doing their students a big disservice.