States with the highest numbers of paper checks include California, New York, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina. There may be a little wiggle room, but Social Security would like people to willingly give up those paper checks.
Remember that the new PSAT is scored between 320 and 1520, which is a composite of the Math section and the Reading and Writing sections together. To score in the 70th percentile or above, you want to aim for at least a 490 in Reading and Writing and a 500 in Math (or a composite of 990).
The mean of state minimum semifinalist PSAT 2016 scores is 212.67, up slightly from 2015 but down from the 2014 average of 214.1. The 2016 average score converts to an SAT score of ~1425, up from ~1422 in 2015.