A thick test booklet is dropped on the desk in front of each of the students as they pick up their pencils and prepare to spend several hours tackling the long and difficult PSAT. Students Justyn Epps and Logan Miertschin begin their own exams, unaware that months later, they would be named Commended students by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.  

The National Merit Scholarship Corporation, or the NMSC, has been rewarding and recognizing students who earn high scores on their PSAT exams for many years. The program presents around 34,000 of the highest scoring students out of the 1.6 million participants accepted in the program with Letters of Commendation to name them Commended students. Principal Walter Berringer presented now seniors Justyn and Logan with their letters earlier this school year. 

“I figured I would do decently on the PSAT,” Justyn said. “I’ve always been intellectually strong, but I was not expecting to get any recommendation or a commended status or anything like that on this exam.” 

Earning the title of a Commended Student, however, had some obstacles as well as benefits. 

“The PSAT is basically a mixture of everything I’ve done in my classes, so I had to prepare for every part of the exam that I was going to do,” Logan said. “I did not do as well as I had hoped to on the math portion of the exam because I forgot to pace myself and ran out of time,but it was nice to be recognized by this program anyway.”

Although the awards and recognitions that the NMSC offers are not easy to earn, they could help students looking for encouragement for the PSAT. 

“I think that this program could help motivate certain people to try harder at these exams,” Justyn said. “There are some people who would see that the chances of getting commended are very slim and wouldn’t really try, but there are many others who would think that, “I feel like I could do this with a little bit of work,” and they know that if they put in the work, they could get somewhere.”