<p>*but may become more clear as the UA NMF housing-portion scholarship is reduced in 2013 and going forward. *</p>
<p>waaaah, waaaah, waaaaah!</p>
<p>I still do not understand this. OF COURSE the number of NMFs enrolling at UA will go down once the housing scholarship is reduced. Duhhh! I know the scholarship reduction will save UA $$, but frankly that seems shortsighted to me. Is the school committed to pngoing excellence? Or not?</p>
<p>Is there any chance the new president could reinstant the full four-year housing scholarship for NMFs? </p>
<p>Younger son takes the PSAT this October. He will not be entering college until 2014. Well, I guess the less-impressive UA housing scholarship relieves some of the pressure to ace the PSAT. Oh well…</p>
<p>LadyDianeski: After looking over the NMF Scholarship Thread, I really don’t see any better offers than the various scholarships that The University of Alabama System offers. Do You? The University of Alabama-Huntsville offers a Full Ride, can you get better than that? The University of Alabama-Birmingham offers tuition+fees+housing+$2500 one time stipend. The University of Alabama’s NMF scholarship with one year free housing is still Highly competitive, if not better, than most other colleges. How are the scholarships not extraordinary?</p>
<p>The university may see a drop in NMF enrollment, but we will just have to wait and see and I don’t think that will happen. I hope not.</p>
<p>I agree with robotbldmom! Besides, its in a pretty area, easily accessing many areas of the country. (I consider one plane change an easy access.)</p>
<p>The programs are GROWING - not declining as in California colleges where kids have great difficulty graduating in four years.</p>
<p>I don’t see/read/hear ANYTHING that the programs at UA aren’t pretty strong across the board.</p>
<p>I’d rather see my son be in a building college than a program riding on its laurels or struggling for funds.</p>
<p>Most kids that chose UA had several competitive choices. I don’t know anyone that regrets it and my son is a Presidential so we’ve been paying board all along.</p>
<p>The other thing to keep in mind is that the more competitive your state is, the higher the score needed to become NMSF. So, that person in honors with you may not have the finalist designation but have outscored others awarded the NMSF. Additionally, not all schools stress the PSAT because they consider the NMS program too limited.</p>
<p>I suspect UA is seeing this as part of their decisions. The other thing they are probably tracking is achievement…I suspect they are getting good bang for their buck with most of the scholarship recipients in terms of achievement.</p>
<p>We’re happy with deciding on UA and would do it again Roll Tide!</p>
<p>Besides: I seriously doubt CC is as much fun and as supportive with other schools!</p>
<p>Lady Dianeski - I don’t want to beat the proverbial dead horse or turn this thread into another 250+ posts, but I think UA fully expects the number of NMF’s to drop and they are fine with that. Why? Because number of NMF’s doesn’t carry the weight that it used to in the rankings that universities and prospective students & parents follow so closely. In fact, NMF may not carry any weight at all in the current rankings.</p>
<p>As long as they continue to attract high ACT/SAT kids (which I think is what has replaced NMF in rankings), they will sit tight. If they see a drop off in overall ACT/SAT scores or feel the need to draw in even more high ACT/SAT stats kids, I would expect UA to implement a higher level “Presidential Elite” scholarship (full tuition + say $5k/yr) for 34+ ACT scores.</p>
<p>To question UA’s commitment to excellence because they cut 3 yrs of housing from the NMF scholarship, when few if any comparable schools offer any housing, seems off-base.</p>
<p>Phillygirl, Your high school should notify you shortly. The schools are ‘officially’ allowed to announce their semifinalists 9/12 but some are slower than others releasing this information. Congratulations!</p>
<p>Bama has looked over the stats and the rankings criteria and sees that high stats kids are what’s needed. They aren’t getting added boosts for NMFs anymore when they’re still getting a bunch more high stats Presidential students.</p>
<p>Think about it. Why would Bama be upset if the NMF numbers drop a bit IF they continue to grow the Presidential numbers? </p>
<p>And, I agree. The school might implement some add’l bennies for those in the ACT 35/36 range to attract more of those students.</p>
<p>Thanks, y’all, and sorry for re-raising a topic that was already beaten to death in another thread. (I didn’t participate in that other thread…didn’t know about the new scholarship rules until recently…sorry.)</p>
<p>Also sorry for all the typos. I was typing fast at work. “reinstant” – ugh!!</p>
<p>Younger son takes the PSAT this October. He will not be entering college until 2014. Well, I guess the less-impressive UA housing scholarship relieves some of the pressure to ace the PSAT. Oh well…</p>
<p>I would still encourage your younger son. The NMF scholarship is still worth about $16k more than the Presidential when you add the year of housing, the $1k per year, the $2k study abroad, and the iPad 3.</p>
<p>Bull87 and Mom2ck,
I was wondering about this, “Because number of NMF’s doesn’t carry the weight that it used to in the rankings that universities and prospective students & parents follow so closely. In fact, NMF may not carry any weight at all in the current rankings.” </p>
<p>Did college ranking systems like that of US News & World report use NMF attendees in the past and now they don’t anymore? I think that they’ve always give a range for ACT and SAT scores of accepted students, correct? </p>
<p>I am asking only because I am interested in how colleges are ranked in US News and other publications. I am not trying to add to any debate or anything.</p>
<p>I did a lot of independent research into the fascinating topic of national merit scholarships last year in connection with a project I was working on. I learned that many schools have moved away from NMFs for political reasons: the National Merit Scholarship Program represents one of the last remaining level playing fields in higher education, and for that reason alone the usual suspects spend a lot of time demonizing it. I love the fact that UA supports merit scholarships, and while we can quibble over the implementation of the various scholarship programs, the overarching message is how UA sees itself and its academic mission. Roll Tide.</p>
<p>xcitfan - In my opinion, your statement - “I learned that many schools have moved away from NMFs for political reasons: the National Merit Scholarship Program represents one of the last remaining level playing fields in higher education, and for that reason alone the usual suspects spend a lot of time demonizing it.” - is half right.</p>
<p>Right in the sense that the vast majority of the “usual suspects” have moved totally away from (and “demonize”) true merit-based scholarships (including NMF) for “political reasons”, instead choosing to allocate their monies based on financial need, first generation, diversity, or some other non-merit-based criteria.</p>
<p>However, as has been discussed ad nauseum in other threads on this board, the National Merit Scholarship program is NOT “one of the last remaining level playing fields in higher education”. If it were a truly level playing field, there would be one national cutoff for NMF, not a state-by-state cutoff.</p>
<p>Like you, I love that UA supports truly merit-based scholarships, and especially love that they base almost all of them on objective criteria. Regardless of gender, race, economic status, political affiliation, etc. - if you make the test score and the gpa, you get the scholarship; if you don’t, you don’t.</p>
<p>I can say my ACT 34, NMSF HS class of 2013 kid would have cut his 9 college list to to 5 if the NM scholarship did not change or if there was a “presidential” plus scholarship. He will be applying to more schools where the FA is very generous for upper middle class incomes or where his ACT provides a chance at full tuition. </p>
<p>But even if UA dropped NM scholarship totally, the Presidential and the meeting with Dr. Sharpe would make UA a very attractive school to him.</p>
<p>Honestly, I think the sum of NM and Presidential will be about the same for the class of 2016 and 2017. I wish we knew how many Presidential were given so we could track this.</p>
<p>Speaking of rankings, the USNWR rankings come out tomorrow, don’t they? I’ll be curious to see where Bama ends up. I’m expecting to see them move up as the incoming class stats keep going up.</p>
<p>*Did college ranking systems like that of US News & World report use NMF attendees in the past and now they don’t anymore? I think that they’ve always give a range for ACT and SAT scores of accepted students, correct? *</p>
<p>I don’t know exactly how the number of NMFs affected the rankings, but I think it did. And, if now it doesn’t, then it doesn’t "pay’ for Bama to keep increasing its NMF numbers.</p>
<p>The middle quartiles of SAT and ACT do strongly affect the rankings. So, if Bama is looking to bump their upper quartile beyond ACT 29+, then seeking high stats is the way to go.</p>
Roll Tide!</p>