This year, 12 students from Diamond Bar High School have achieved the honor of becoming National Merit Scholar semifinalists by attaining outstanding scores on the Preliminary Scholastic Assessment Test, or the pSAT, scoring in the top one percent relative to their state of origin’s average score.

Every year, 1.6 million juniors nationwide take the pSAT exam, which similarly to the SAT, is a standard benchmark for colleges to grade participants upon. On top of its status as a benchmark for excellence, the assessment is used to grant scholarships and grants. Those who received the honor this year were seniors Jennifer Chang, Himansi Gupta, Michael Hu, Angel Huang, Jeremiah Jung, Carl Luo, Owen Ma, Felix Peng, Emily Ren, David Zheng, Natalie Zhou and Michelle Zuo.

“I wasn’t paying attention to time and realized I was really behind on the reading section, and ended up speeding through the last few,” Peng said. “I felt confident on the math though.” 

Senior, Michael Hu, scored a 1520 out of 1520 on his exam. Hu and all the other winners of the scholar award studied and prepared hard for the test, dedicating many hours to ensure they scored as high as possible.

“I was doing SAT prep before [the actual test], so I felt prepared, although I missed out on the 10th grade pSAT prep,” Peng said. “I did sleep 14 hours [on the night before], which probably helped.”

This year’s pSAT will be taken on October 14th this year by juniors all over the country. For the first time ever, the pSAT is changing to an online format. Its counterpart, the SAT, will follow shortly after, with the first online SAT to be taken on March 9th, 2024.

While some colleges are starting to weed the SAT out of their application requirements, the pSAT is still as important as ever. The test is still used to earn money and recognition nationwide throughout many esteemed and prestigious schools.