2011 National Merit Scholarships Questions

Paying for College National Merit Aid
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<p>^^mrdysart, from the time I read what your son’s teacher (guidance counselor) told him, I wondered if it had to do with the actual RECEIPT of money, not necessarily with the availability of that money. If you’re in a very wealthy area and a very good school that puts out a lot of great students, I was wondering if maybe the teacher’s comments had something to do with how many kids end up taking advantage of the NMF scholarship packages that are available to them.</p>

<p>There’s an excellent list of large-scholarship NMF schools on this forum. <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>There are a lot of good schools on that list that offer great scholarship packages. But if you’ll look, most are not really widely thought of as “THE school to attend.” For my family, this does not matter. We’re not into the prestige or “status” of a school. We just care whether or not the school has what my kids are looking for, in terms of academics and extracurriculars, if the school feels like a great “fit” to the kid, and if we can afford it. So this list is very handy for our kids.</p>

<p>Naturally, the big-name, top-ranked schools don’t feel as compelled to offer huge NMF scholarship packages to attract top candidates. So there just aren’t many who do.</p>

<p>But from the time I read your son’s teacher’s words, and the whole thing about wealthy kids not getting any NMF scholarship money, I wondered if it had something to do with the fact that kids at your son’s school don’t feel as compelled to apply to lesser-known (or lesser-prestige) schools in order to take advantage of those large scholarship packages. Possibly, if the financial need is not as great in your area as in other areas, there aren’t as many kids who dip into those NMF resources or adapt their college lists to match the available resources?</p>

<p>Just a thought.</p>

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<p>SimpleLife–My daguther LOVES Pitt and hasn’t looked back. She also has never been one to care much about brand names for anything and the idea of graduating debt-free from undergraduate school (she plans to go straight to grad school) was very appealing. The funny thing is that Pitt has a top Japanese program, which we did not know before she applied. And this year, as a sophomore, she is working in a physics lab.</p>

<p>I asked my daughter to apply to Pitt because of the scholarship brochure that arrived in the mail. She will tell anyone who will listen what a great place it is.</p>

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<p>Just a note on WI versus MA high schools. Of the high schools that I know about in MA (which are largely private schools and public schools in ‘high performing towns’) most automatically sign up all the juniors and many sign up all the sophomores. Those areas tend to have a lot of high scorers as well so there is definitely some bias in the system. I don’t know much about WI, but I would not be surprised to learn that there is not as much emphasis on taking the PSAT.</p>

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<p>From my limited knowledge, a goodly number of NM Finalists don’t get much money because they attend colleges that don’t offer much for NMFs. But there are also kids who get a really large amount. I know of a couple of NMSFs that didn’t get NMF because they had no time left for the application and they were applying ONLY to schools that gave no money for it.
In terms of college application - SF carries the weight because F doesn’t come out until later.</p>

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<p>Schools around here offer the PSAT to freshmen, so it is no wonder that the scores required for Maryland are sky high.</p>

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<p>Regarding NMF and Pitt, Pitt does not actually fund many NMF scholarships itself. If you look on the NMF website, in their annual report, Pitt had 23 NMF scholarship recipients, but only sponsored 3 of the scholarships itself. That’s actually a pretty high percentage of MF scholarships to self-sponored scholarships. I think Pitt mostly just throws NMFs into its general scholarship award pool.</p>

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<p>NM status is not mentioned on any honors scholarship offers for Pitt–at least it wasn’t two years ago. That 23 number (I think ) is also for kids who were awarded money by NM or corporations and there are other NMFs (no money) at Pitt and of course other schools. I agree with wgmcp101 about the NM winners going directly into the honors scholarhsip pool.</p>

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<p>Absolutely not. My advice is always mark undecided unless the school gives very good NMF scholarships and it is your unquestionable first choice.</p>

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<p>Actual scholarships in your S school may be rare for the following reasons:</p>

<p>[ol]
[<em>] Your flagship or nearby state schools or the school where most students go to do not offer or offer very little in the form of NM scholarships
[</em>] There are no major employers in the area that offer NM scholarships i.e. most employers are either small or do not offer the scholarship.
[<em>]Student PSAT scores are generally lower than the top performing schools in the state i.e. PSAT scores are just around the cut off for those make it.
[</em>] Students choose not to attend schools that give good NMF scholarships. Attending an ivy may be great but they do not give NMF scholarships.
[/ol]</p>

<p>I would assume it would be one or more of the above. Also, national merits own scholarships are about 1/6 of the pool or about 16%. So if there are 6 national merit finalists in the school, the odds are that at least one will get it. I am not so sure that it should be as rare as the GC is making out.</p>

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<p>you should send them to the school you want the most and the school that you know will accept you that way you will have a safe bet of getting in. remember there is always someone that has better scores than you and more and more people are going to college</p>

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<p>Getting a National Merit Scholarship is part strategy and I think the decision is a little more complicated than that.</p>

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<p>Keep in mind that once a person becomes a semi-finalist, he/she designates one school or designates undecided. The students who were notified last spring that they were in the running (for lack of a better cliche) were able to send their scores to two schools, but those students include students who will have commended status.</p>

<p>I agree with mazewanderer that there can be some strategy involved.</p>

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<p>Ok from what I understand I can only get one scholarship for national merit right?
Like I can only get a corporate scholarship, or only one from the college for national merit, right, but not both?</p>

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<p>This is consistent with my understanding.</p>

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<p>Ok thanks Silverturtle, but I heard some colleges get around it by having a seperate pool that isn’t the “official” scholarship, but gives out more right?</p>

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<p>If a college awards money to NMS or NMF but does not use NMSC to coordinate the program, one could in theory receive two awards.</p>

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<p>So today some secretary from my son’s high school called to ask me to tell my son to pick up his National Merit application…that was it…that was his notification that he made NMSF. Although we already knew he would it might have been nice if someone said congratulations. Don’t know why I should be surprised. I’m envious of those of you whose schools made a big deal of this. My son deserves more…</p>

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<p>The day that they announced the NMSFs at DD’s school coincided with the day before the administration of another test, so all of the teachers and administrators were wearing big buttons that said: “I’m more than just a number.” I thought it was a real slap for the two girls who had made NMSF especially considering that the school had not had any semi-finalists for some years–nor has it had any since. So be happy for the call from the secretary. Perhaps they will make an announcement in an assembly as well.</p>

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<p>*Ok from what I understand I can only get one scholarship for national merit right?
Like I can only get a corporate scholarship, or only one from the college for national merit, right, but not both? *</p>

<p>Here’s are two of my posts from another thread that explains how you can get two NMF scholarships…but only one “official” one. </p>

<p>This is how it works…my son got the big NMF scholarship from Bama AND got a corporate one…</p>

<p>Schools like Bama that offer huge scholarships for NMF designate a tiny part of their scholarship ($1k) to be the “official” NMF scholarship.</p>

<p>My son “declined” the $1k “official NMF” Bama scholarship, accepted the rest (tuition, housing, laptop, etc), and accepted the “official” corporate scholarship of $2500 per year.</p>

<p>So…that’s how you can get “two” NMF scholarships…but only one can be the “official” one. </p>

<p>A corporate scholarship doesn’t require being named “#1” since it’s not a college.</p>

<p>You need to find out if your child’s school choice designates some/all of their scholarship as “official.” Then you need to figure out which strategy would give you the most money.</p>

<p>For instance…if the school gives 1/2 tuition ($20k per year), but designates $5000 per year as the official portion, and your corporation only gives $2500, then you’re better off ONLY taking the school scholarship…otherwise your school scholarship will deduct $5k from the half tuition scholarship.</p>

<p>However, if the school’s official portion is only $1k and your corporate one is $2500 per year, then you get both…but the school’s scholarship will be $1k less.</p>

<p>Does that make sense?</p>

<p>Anyway…When if you’re faced with this issue next winter, call NMCorp…they are super helpful with this issue. They managed the whole thing by phone for us. They want kids to get as much money as possible.</p>

<p>Nat’l Merit Corp 847-866-5100
NMCorp code 0085 (code to send SAT score)</p>

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<p>*So today some secretary from my son’s high school called to ask me to tell my son to pick up his National Merit application…that was it…that was his notification that he made NMSF. Although we already knew he would it might have been nice if someone said congratulations. Don’t know why I should be surprised. I’m envious of those of you whose schools made a big deal of this. My son deserves more… *</p>

<p>Sorry to hear that your son’s school doesn’t make a big deal out of NMSF/NMF.</p>

<p>I’m convinced that some educators don’t make a big deal because they feel threatened by the whole “high scores” thing. </p>

<p>The truth is that many educators and/or their children didn’t have high test scores, so their egos need to downplay any significance. </p>

<p>My kids’ principal readily admits that he wasn’t a high test scorer, but he doesn’t have an ego problem so he makes a HUGE deal out of making NMSF/NMF. He mentions it at assemblies, parent meetings, sends the info out in a newsletter, and announces it again at graduation.</p>