Straight answers
What's a good PSAT score, and how does National Merit work?
The PSAT/NMSQT is scored from 320 to 1520, and 'good' depends entirely on what you are asking it for. For National Merit specifically, only the junior-year PSAT/NMSQT counts, and eligibility runs off a separate Selection Index — (2 × Reading and Writing score + Math score) ÷ 10, running from 48 to 228 — with Semifinalist cutoffs set state by state after the fact.
Two different scores, one test. The 320–1520 score is the one a student sees and the one that maps roughly onto SAT performance. The Selection Index is the one National Merit actually uses, and it weights Reading and Writing double — a holdover from when the SAT reported three section scores. A student can have a strong total score and a Selection Index that misses their state's line, or the reverse, because the two are weighted differently.
Cutoffs are not published in advance, and they are not national. The Commended Student threshold is a single national number; the Semifinalist cutoff is set separately for each state and is announced roughly a year after the test is taken. That means nobody — no tutor, no prep company, no blog — knows this year's number when your student sits the test. Anyone stating one as fact is estimating.
For scale: reported figures for the class of 2026 — compiled from student self-reports, not published by NMSC, which releases no cutoffs — put the national Commended line at 210 and Texas's Semifinalist line at 222, with state lines running roughly from 210 into the mid-220s. Historical, crowdsourced, useful only for calibration, and useless as a prediction — cutoffs moved up in many states that cycle.
The part families most often get wrong: only the junior-year PSAT/NMSQT enters the competition — formally, the sitting no later than a student's third year of high school, which matters for anyone finishing in three. A sophomore's PSAT does not count toward National Merit no matter how high it is. It is still genuinely useful — it is a low-stakes baseline and it is the same skills — but it is practice, not entry.
Worth keeping in proportion: National Merit is a scholarship competition a small fraction of test-takers place in, not the point of the PSAT for most students. Brainrise does not project anyone's index or predict a cutoff — we would be making the number up. What the PSAT is genuinely good for is showing which skills need work while there is still a year of runway.