***2018 National Merit Finalist Thread****

Paying for College National Merit Aid
1401

@menloparkmom @JBStillFlying I spoke w rep at NMC two weeks ago. My kid had a 224. Straight As all 4 years including many APs. School pres, class pres, choir leader 3 years, political club head, math team, math club head 3 years, dorm proctor 2 years, multiple varsity athlete and varsity captain, multiple LORs describing her as one of the strongest they had encountered in all their years of teaching. Has received multiple academic and citizenship awards. Accepted in to many top universities and has chosen Harvard. Has not found a cure for cancer. Did not earn a NMF scholar award. NMC clearly said they don’t give the $2500s to kids getting corporate or college sponsored NM awards. They also emphatically stated that they award on a national level, not on a by state level, and the by state aspect is just used developing the pot of NMFs.

This is what I was told directly by NMC. It may or may not differ from what you wrote. It may be due to each of us hearing differently. It would be nice if an NM rep would weigh in here and provide clarity and responses to specific questions.

1402

“where exactly is your proof of this ? or is this just conjecture in your part?”

  • Page three of the NMSC instructions, which read as follows. Note point #3:

"REPORT OF A SPONSOR COLLEGE AS FIRST CHOICE
Consideration for a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship award is limited to Semifi nalists who qualify as
Finalists and who also

  1. report to NMSC that a sponsor college is their first choice (see the list of college sponsors included in
    the “Competition Instructions” section of the OSA and at nationalmerit.org/resources.php);
  2. have applied for admission to the sponsor college; and
  3. have not been offered any other National Merit Scholarship (corporate-sponsored, National, or another
    college-sponsored award). No student will receive more than one scholarship offer from NMSC. "

In other words, if you are offered a $2500 award, you are NOT eligible for a college sponsored. And (again): No student will receive more than one scholarship offer from NMSC.

“I would REALLY like to see proof from NMSC that NMSC awards the $2500 scholarships ONLY to NMF’s who have NOT let them know of their first choice.”

  • That's not what I posted. I posted about first choices that were college-sponsors. Not first choices that weren't.

“I think you are mixing up the fact that SOME colleges DO ask applicants to notify NMSC that they are a students first choice by Dec 1, but that may be for THEIR scholarship funding planning.”

  • Nope - I have no knowledge of that scenario whatsoever and it does not apply in this case anyway.

"'"Meaning: if you were offered one of these two prior to the college sponsor notifications, you are NOT eligible for a college sponsored award. Period. "

Wrong again."

  • Uh - I'm right - see above.

“At USC for instance, NMF’S CAN recieve BOTH a corporate sponsored award as well as the official college sponsored award. A parent of a NMF who is attending USC stated that this year on another thread.”

  • What parents report on other threads are not to be taken as a substitute for what NMSC has made very clear. You can NOT receive an NMSC-sponsored corporate award AND an NMSC-sponsored college award. The instructions could not be more clear.

“And I know for a FACT that NMF’s who were offered the $2500 scholarship, WERE able to contact NMSC after deciding to enroll at USC, and switch the one time $2500 award to 4- $1000 awards. They are NOT going to tell a top NMF they CAN’T have more $$ if they want/ need it.”

  • it is not wise to substitute what you "know for a fact" at a particular school to the general rule. It's better to go off of what NMSC is posting. That's for a couple of reasons. First, USC might have some rare circumstance making it unique. Second, the information reported by other posters could be inaccurate or inadvertently misleading. Stick with the NMSC rules.

““However - at least for the class of 2017 - the first batch of college sponsorships occurred on May 1.”
Again, that may have been the case at the colleges you researched, but it is not the case with all NM sponsoring colleges.'”

  • Again - I'm going off the NMSC rules, in this case the timeline they post on page three of their instructions:

“May 1, 2018: NMSC will begin mailing college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offers.
NOTE: If NMSC receives notification of a change in college choice from a Finalist after mailing
a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offer to that student, the change in college choice
will not be processed and the Finalist cannot be offered another college-sponsored Merit
Scholarship award. This applies even if the new choice of college is one that also sponsors
Merit Scholarship awards. Therefore, a Finalist who has previously reported a sponsor
college as fi rst choice but is uncertain about it may choose to notify NMSC that he or she is
now “undecided” to prevent being made an offer from a school he or she is uncertain about
attending; such notifi cation must be submitted online at osa.nationalmerit.org before May 1.
The Finalist can subsequently report a fi rm college choice that NMSC receives by May 31.”

In 2017, my daughter did receive her notification of a college sponsored scholarship in her portal, as expected. She was on the first (ie the March 1) list to go the the college sponsor so was in the first batch of college-sponsored recipients.

“[ this was written in mid MARCH]”

  • yes - the Dean of Admissions was responding that they had received the first list on 3/1. This is exactly what NMSC says happens. Not sure what the confusion is here.

·“Once we’ve selected our admitted class (which, as you know, will be done next week), we then formally award Presidential Scholarships to admitted NMFs, and send them an award letter. [ in other words, USC does NOT wait until May 1 to notify accepted NMF’s of their award.]”

  • @menloparkmom you are confusing the college's own merit aid to NMF's with the NMSC awards. Any college - even those who are NOT sponsors - may award such merit aid on their own timeline. I'm referring to the NMSC-specific awards which are (once again) the one-time $2500, the college-sponsored, and the corporate-sponsored. Please note that "college-sponsored" does NOT refer to the presidential merit aid that USC may also award. It's another scholarship altogether and, in fact, is often stacked on top of such merit aid.
1403

“After getting mail a couple weeks ago indicating he was not a sponsored scholar (which we expected), DP Jr. today received a letter dated May 15 indicating he was a school sponsored Scholar. That was surprising.”

@DavidPuddy - just to be clear: you are saying that your son ended up with two contradictory letters? Or that the first one was referring to one of the other NMSC scholarships (ie the one-time $2500 or the corporate)?

1404

“NMC clearly said they don’t give the $2500s to kids getting corporate or college sponsored NM awards. They also emphatically stated that they award on a national level, not on a by state level, and the by state aspect is just used developing the pot of NMFs.”

@dowzerw Thank you for that information - that first part confirms my understanding and settles the issue once and for all. As for the issue on state-representational, there must be some confusion in the way that was communicated because the directions are very clear on this issue as well:

“As in the designation of Semifinalists, these awards [referring to the $2500] are allocated on a state-representational basis according to the state’s percentage of the national total of high school graduates; winners are also named in the other selection units established for the competition. Each Finalist competes with all others in the state/unit that includes the high school in which the student is enrolled when winners are chosen.” - (NMSC competition instructions page 2)

Just to be very clear: NMSF’s are determined by state-representational basis. NMF’s are determined without consideration of state-representation: the SAT confirming score, for instance, is the same for everyone. NMSC $2500 award recipients are determined using the same basis as NMSF (ie state-represntational).

1405

How would you read this? “11 of the 16 received recognition from the National Merit Scholarship program.”

Does that mean some number may be ‘Commended’ and some number are National Merit Scholars? This is from a college that offers big $$$ for National Merit Finalists but I’m trying to gage how many NMF are in this particular program and the wording seems unclear to me.

1406

" Please note that “college-sponsored” does NOT refer to the presidential merit aid that USC may also award.’
I KNOW that.

"you are confusing the college’s own merit aid to NMF’s with the NMSC awards "

no, I’m not.

USC awards approx 200 1/2 tuition NM scholarships, as well as the “official” $1000/yr NMF scholarship to NMF’s who enroll at USC.

USC ALSO offers a DIFFERENT 1/2 tuition scholarship - called the Presidential scholarship- to other NON NMF’S.
I was NOT referring to those USC Presidential scholarships in my previous posts.

I DO know what I’m talking about.

I have been on CC since 2004- and have been a long time contributor to CC’s NM threads.
And since I HAVE learned that NMSC does make exceptions to their written rules, I will use that knowledge going forward, and not just “trust” what someone, with only their own limited experience with NM, and with little time on CC, is stating as fact.

1407

The NMF 1/2 tuition (called the National Merit Finalist Presidential, IIRC) is a USC-administered merit award and so is technically a separate scholarship from anything administered by NMSC. Therefore, it’s quite possible to end up with a $2500 one-time NMSC award along with the 1/2 tuition, rather than the $1,000/yr college sponsored NMSC award and the 1/2 tuition. In other words, the $1,000/yr is not automatically attached to the 1/2 tuition. If USC can “switch” you out of the $2500 to the $1,000/yr. that’s very nice but I wouldn’t count on it, esp. if you had already been offered the $2500 prior to hearing anything from USC. The simple reason is that NMSC’s rules are simply not set up to switch people from one type of scholarship to another, even assuming they had funds left over to do so (not likely to be the case). If someone experienced differently this year, they are most welcome to correct me.

We faced a similar situation with UChicago last year, only it was a tad easier because D17 had already been accepted EDII so she could list UChicago as a first choice by 3/1 and be in the first batch of notifications for college-sponsored awards. Had she needed to wait for the RD round she would likely not have listed anything as a choice by 3/1 but rather wait to specify this once she had all her decisions. Had that occurred, she would have been eligible to be offered a $2500 award in March, prior to hearing from all her schools. I highly doubt that UChicago would have happily “switched” her to the yearly college-sponsored amount, as those funds would have been used up on other recipients. You get what you get - at least that’s what I had concluded based on my own “limited” experience with both CC and NMSC :wink:

1408

@3scoutsmom - who are the 16 and why singled out? Did they win an award of some kind?

Do colleges even get lists of commended? Guessing these kids were NMSF at least, but of course it depends on what the overall recognition is for (or at least that helps provide insight). If the school gives big bucks for NMF’s then it’s likely they were given merit aid of some kind, but vague wording is always suspicious . . .

1409

@JBStillFlying this was part of the description of the the 2018 McDermott finalists. IIR, in past years they actually called out how many where NMFs. https://www.utdallas.edu/mcdermott/scholars/class-of-2018
This year is the smallest class size of finalists for this program and I was wondering why.

UTD gives a full ride to NMF with no strings other than a 3.0 GPA, the McDermott program is a full ride plus year round stipend and lots of travel and other perks but also many, many strings and restrictions that weren’t really made clear up front. I’m wondering how many decided a full ride with no strings was ‘enough’ or if those “recognized from the National Merit Scholarship program” may be Commended which means they would not have the option of a full ride without the McDermott scholarship.

1410

@3scoutsmom - when you do a name search for each, you can find that at least one is commended.

1411

"Therefore, it’s quite possible to end up with a $2500 one-time NMSC award along with the 1/2 tuition, rather than the $1,000/yr college sponsored NMSC award and the 1/2 tuition. "

I KNOW that. My DS went to USC and was a NMF as well as Trustee scholar.
What you dont seem to want to hear is that SOME $2500 NM winners want the colleges official scholarship instead of the one time $2500 , when that means they will have more $$ for expenses. And that CAN and HAS been arranged, with a call to NMSC, regardless of whether you want to believe it or not.
Do you REALLY BELIEVE NMSC wants to make it HARDER for students to afford going to college by being inflexible with their rules???

“The simple reason is that NMSC’s rules are simply not set up to switch people from one type of scholarship to another, even assuming they had funds left over to do so (not likely to be the case”

You REALLY do not understand where the funds for the official scholarships come from.
The ONLY scholarships that are paid directly by NMSC from NMSC funds are the official one time $2500 scholarships.
The College sponsored official scholarships are PAID for BY THE COLLEGES, NOT by NMSC, from the $$ that NMSC collects from each sponsoring college each year.
From THOSE funds, the college’s official award is distributed through NMSC to each NMF at the college .

Therefore, switching from the official NMSC $2500 award to the college 's official award wont cost NMSC a PENNY. Because it is the COLLEGE that pays for their official NMFs awards.

get it?

1412

@3scoutsmom – It seems pretty clear to me. Forget Commended students, because that’s neither here nor there. What UTD is saying is that 5 of the 16 are not National Merit Scholars, which is very possible, since what they are looking for McDermott goes way beyond what it takes to be a NMF. It so happens that many of the McDermotts are also NMFs, but that is not a requirement, and, apparently, this year 5 of the 16 were not. Why are you reading more into it than that?

1413

^^ A quick perusal of state, community and school lists shows that of the 16, seven - maybe eight - are SF or higher. No more than that. @3scoutsmom gave the reason why she’s curious: the number seems low compared to prior years. Some of those high schools are fairly prestigious, intensely STEM, and had a lot of SF’s. So the question as to why a smaller number are headed to UTD/McDermott is a very reasonable one. Esp. for those who have kids headed there.

1414

Yes I was just trying to figure out if there is any connection to the drop in the number of students that accept the McDermott this year and those who are National Merit but would rather take a full ride without all the strings attached. This year only 16 accepted the McDermott Scholarship.

2018 16 students

2017 23 students

2016 27 students

2015 25 students

2014 25 students

UTD changed the National Merit package in the Fall of 2016 making it a full ride (maybe a few hundred short depending on the cost of books) but it really hasn’t been well know until recently (DS’s GC wasn’t aware of it and we’re in state!) maybe more students are opting to take National Merit packages at UTD or elsewhere?

I do know that this year 63 students were invited to the finalist weekend and during that weekend we were told that their “target” number was 25 +/- and that they had no plans to increase or decrease the program. We were also told that an endowment fully funds the program so money is not an issue. UTD is expecting a record number of National Merit students this year.

Others have speculated that the decrease may be due to the fact they moved the deadline for acceptance later.

1415

“What you dont seem to want to hear is that SOME $2500 NM winners want the colleges official scholarship instead of the one time $2500 , when that means they will have more $$ for expenses. And that CAN and HAS been arranged, with a call to NMSC, regardless of whether you want to believe it or not.”

  • I'm sure they do want the additional scholarship money! Who wouldn't? For those you know who apparently worked out some "arrangement", did NMSC notify the recipient about a change in scholarship, or did the recipient call NMSC to request it? Another (more pertinent) question: how many have attempted the same thing and been politely told "No"?

“You REALLY do not understand where the funds for the official scholarships come from.
The ONLY scholarships that are paid directly by NMSC from NMSC funds are the official one time $2500 scholarships.
The College sponsored official scholarships are PAID for BY THE COLLEGES, NOT by NMSC, from the $$ that NMSC collects from each sponsoring college each year.”

  • Parly correct, partly not. Yes, the college sponsors fund the college-sponsor scholarships. That's why they are called "sponsors". NMSC does not "collect" funds from the colleges each year. Instead, the sponsors have established an endowment that NMSC manages (whether there's a separate maintenance arrangement between the college and NMSC wherein funds are continually contributed to the latter for "upkeep" of the endowment is a separate issue). It's NMSC who cuts the check(s) for each student and hands them over to the colleges, deducting those amounts from the respective endowments accordingly.

“From THOSE funds, the college’s official award is distributed through NMSC to each NMF at the college.”

  • Yes; however, USC doesn't have an infinite endowment - they are going to have most if not all of those $1,000/yr sponsored scholarships assigned well before the 5/1 notification date. In fact, their ability to draw down the endowment at will is probably restricted (they can close it down and take back the funds, if the agreement allows them to do so. As several colleges have dropped sponsorship over the years, they have either drawn down those funds to nothing over time or taken them back. Guessing the latter). You seem to be assuming that USC has arranged for 100% of their NMF's to get a $1,000/yr NM scholarship - do you know that this is, indeed, the case? USC certainly doesn't advertise that. In fact, they really don't say much of anything about that $1,000/year sponsored scholarship.

“Therefore, switching from the official NMSC $2500 award to the college 's official award wont cost NMSC a PENNY. Because it is the COLLEGE that pays for their official NMFs awards.”

  • True. It costs USC. See my above response. Again, unless USC has arranged for 100% of their NMF's to get a $1,000/year NM scholarship, you simply can't conclude that you'll be able to switch up from your current one-time award.

@dowzerw said earlier that “NMC clearly said they don’t give the $2500s to kids getting corporate or college sponsored NM awards.” That makes sense. So if you’ve listed a college sponsor such as USC by the time they start making decisions on that $2500, you will be cut out of that consideration. But . . . does this also mean that if you originally had a $2500 (and hadn’t listed USC), that NMSC contacts you and says now that you have just listed USC they are switching you up to the college sponsored? That’s the only possible loophole I can think of on this crazy question.

@menloparkmom

1416

"But . . . does this also mean that if you originally had a $2500 (and hadn’t listed USC), that NMSC contacts you and says now that you have just listed USC they are switching you up to the college sponsored? That’s the only possible loophole I can think of on this crazy question.’

No. If you would go back and read what I have posted numerous times on this thread, instead of speculating or coming up with scenarios of your own, you would learn how it can work.

As I have stated , at LEAST twice , some $2500 winners, after being accepted at a college and having decided to enroll there, contacted NMSC and asked that they be allowed to switch from the $2500 award to the colleges official NMF award. Because they would then be receiving more $$ . And they were allowed to do so. Because it is NOT the intent of NMSC to prevent students from being awarded $$ that they need / and are entitled to.
The student is the one who needs to make the request.

1417

‘Again, unless USC has arranged for 100% of their NMF’s to get a $1,000/year NM scholarship, you simply can’t conclude that you’ll be able to switch up from your current one-time award.’

USC ALWAYS plans on awarding NMF’s who are accepted and enrolled at USC their $1000/ year award, as well as their NM 1/2 tuition scholarship. All the student has to do to be awarded both scholarships is notify NMSC, by Mid May, that USC is their first choice.
But since there can be only one “official” NM award, if a $2500 winner wants to switch to the USC official $1000/ year award, THEY have to contact NMSC and ask for it to be done.

1418

Mighty odd that NMSC would have a chance to switch someone off its own funding but require the student make contact to do so. You’d think they’d jump at the chance to save a bit of money or re-distribute to another outstanding NMF, especially as they clearly mention that additional funding helps more of the deserving NMF’s. You’d think, as well, that they’d change the wording of their instructions a bit to appear more friendly about this (probably unusual) occurrence. So yes, mighty odd indeed . . . if USC was so eager to take on the obligation you’d think this would be a done deal w/o the applicant’s initiation. You’d think they also would mention the sponsor award on their website!

But @menloparkmom is adamant that the student has this option, at least for USC. It certainly never hurts to ask! If anyone decides to quiz NMSC about this exact scenario (ie switching up from the $2500 one-time award if the college-sponsored amount is higher . . . ) be sure to post back here for the benefit of all, esp. those who are gearing up for the 2019 contest. While this can’t be a very common scenario, it certainly can happen if the one-time award is bestowed before the NMF has settled on a first choice (which in turn is a college sponsor with a higher per-year NM award . . . ).

1419

A debate about the size of raindrops in a bucket when the COA is $75k.

1420

Well, no and yes, which is why I noted it. I think the wording on the initial letter leads to confusion.

In the initial letter, verbiage is used very close to "we know you might be disappointed to not be named a Merit Scholar, but a Finalist is an honor ". We knew he would not be a corporate winner of course. We assumed he would not be an at large winner. So the letter was not a surprise. The wording described above implies some finality to the process.

In the college sponsored letter -which I can only assume was generated May 15 because he did not name his school as his number 1 school until essentially May 1- the language says, verbatim: “All of us at NMSC hope that being named a Merit Scholar designee will be a source of great pride and encouragement…”

I hope that makes sense.