For many students, the PSAT is the first step in the marathon of test prep. Accordingly, I get a lot of questions about this rite of passage from my SAT/ACT tutoring clients.
Though many juniors feel stressed or irritated when their high schools automatically sign them up to take the PSAT—as most U.S. schools do—the truth is that there are many ways you can use this early standardized test to your advantage. To help you do so, today’s post clarifies a question that many students wonder about: if you get a high score on the PSAT, thus making you potentially eligible for the National Merit Scholarship, do you HAVE to specifically take the SAT in order to hang onto your NMS candidacy? or is the ACT also a valid portal to a National Merit Scholarship?
ARTICLE CONTENTS
2. How the PSAT and NMS Used to Work
3. In 2026, Can High PSAT Scorers Take the ACT or the Digital SAT?
4. Conclusion
1. Why Is the Preliminary SAT Required?
Though this early version of the test might strike you as nothing more than a pesky disruption to sophomore year, there are good intentions behind it. In fact, the PSAT is actually designed to help you in two ways:
Give you an accurate sense of how you’d score on the SAT, possibly helping you choose between the ACT and the SAT when the time comes; and
Offering you a chance to score into the National Merit Scholarship program, which could win you an impressive line on your CV, college money, or both!
2. The NMS Qualification via PSAT before 2019
Until 2019, all of those good opportunities that come with the PSAT…also came with a caveat. If a student scored in the tippy-top percentage of their state’s PSAT-takers that year, and thus placed in the running to become a National Merit Scholar Semi-Finalist / Finalist / Winner…in order to actually WIN the title and the scholarship money, they’d have to “validate” their PSAT scores with an actual SAT test.
In other words, they’d have to take an official SAT on one of the published test dates and earn a score in the same range as they did in their impressive PSAT. The test-makers wanted students to do this in order to prove that their high score on the PSAT wasn’t just a stroke of good luck.
What this meant was that many top-performing students would have to take the SAT instead of the ACT in order to fulfill the requirement to become a National Merit Scholar. They didn’t have any choice when it came to their pre-college exam.
Even worse, if a student really did perform better on the ACT, she would study for and take THAT test in order to achieve the top score she needed for her college apps list...and then have to study for and sit down to take an SAT in addition—solely so that she could validate her PSAT score and become a National Merit Scholar!
That meant, in a sick twist of fate, that getting a fantastic PSAT score often meant you eventually had to spend MORE time on test prep instead of LESS!
Fortunately, though, there was an important update a few years back that affected the class of 2020 and beyond (in other words, anyone who took the October 2018 PSAT their Junior year and everyone after that). Drumroll please…
3. You can “validate” your PSAT score with the ACT for the NMS Program!
In other words: you can choose to pursue EITHER test (the SAT or the ACT), based on which one genuinely plays to your strengths better…and either one can be used to validate a top PSAT score and help you land a National Merit Scholarship! Yay!
If you’re more likely to score higher on the ACT—yet you’re so high-scoring in general that you make it above your state’s PSAT cut-off score for the National Merit Scholar contest—you can still take the ACT and not have to think twice!
In other words, you can knock two college prep items off your list in one go. No SAT needed!
Conclusion: National Merit Finalists Can Take the ACT or the SAT
In sum, don't go worrying that you’re locked into the SAT just because you did well on the PSAT. You should still absolutely try out both tests and see which is better for you. (My free quiz Should you take the ACT or Digital SAT will also help point you in the right direction!)
I know my private SAT/ACT tutoring clients are letting out a big sigh of relief over this one! And if you still need help deciding which test plays best to your (or your teenager’s) strengths, schedule an Ace The Test: Game Plan™, and I’ll do the birds-eye thinking FOR you!
