What Is a Good PSAT Score?

It is not the SAT scale, and that trips everyone up

The PSAT/NMSQT total runs from 320 to 1520, with Reading and Writing and Math each scored from 160 to 760. The SAT runs from 400 to 1600 with sections from 200 to 800. The top 80 points of the SAT scale simply do not exist on the PSAT.

This causes two predictable errors. Students read a PSAT total as though it were an SAT total and either panic or relax without cause, and parents compare a child's PSAT against published SAT averages and reach a conclusion the numbers do not support.

The scales are designed to be comparable in the sense that they measure the same skills on the same underlying scale, so a PSAT score does give a rough indication of where an unprepared SAT sitting would land. But 1520 is the PSAT ceiling, and a student there has not scored 1520 on the SAT.

The real averages, by grade

In the 2024-25 school year, 3,085,279 students took the PSAT/NMSQT, with a mean total of 950 — 485 on Reading and Writing and 466 on Math. A further 357,706 took the PSAT 10, where the mean was 904.

The more useful breakdown is by grade, because most of the anxiety about PSAT scores comes from comparing students who are a year apart. Tenth graders averaged 911. Eleventh graders averaged 998. That 87-point gap is a year of school, not a difference in ability, and it is the single most useful context for reading a score.

So a rough working answer: above 1000 is above average for an eleventh grader, above 911 is above average for a tenth grader, and neither figure tells you anything about National Merit, which operates on a different number entirely.

The Selection Index, and its hidden weighting

National Merit does not use the PSAT total. It uses a Selection Index, calculated as twice the Reading and Writing section score plus the Math section score, all divided by ten. With sections running 160 to 760, that produces a range from 48 to 228.

Read that formula again, because it contains something most students never notice: Reading and Writing counts twice and Math counts once. Two students with identical totals can have Selection Indexes 20 points apart, and the one with the stronger Reading and Writing score will always be ahead.

The practical consequence for a student pursuing National Merit is that a point of Reading and Writing is worth two points of Math, which reverses the usual advice about working on your weaker section. It is also why a strong mathematician with middling verbal scores is often further from the qualifying mark than their total suggests.

The qualifying Selection Index for Semifinalist status is set separately for each US state and changes annually, so there is no fixed number to aim at.

What a PSAT score does and does not predict

As a forecast of an eventual SAT score, the PSAT is weaker than students assume. It is taken a year or more earlier, usually with no preparation, on a shorter scale, at a point when a great deal of the relevant schoolwork has not happened yet. Treating it as a prediction produces both unwarranted panic and unwarranted complacency.

What it is genuinely good for is a diagnosis of the split. The section scores arrive from a full-length, properly calibrated test sat under real conditions, which is more than any practice paper can offer. Which section is weaker, and by how much, is reliable information and it is what a preparation plan should be built from.

That is how we use it with our SAT students. We read the two section scores and ignore the total, because the total answers a question nobody is asking and the split tells us what to teach first.