Hi everyone, I’m not sure if I should list a sponsor college as my first choice. My first choice is Harvard, which doesn’t participate in this, but I also really like Tufts University, which does. Should I list Tufts, or should I keep Harvard and hope for the $2500 award?
It doesn’t matter what your first choice is right now. Colleges will not be notified until March at the earliest.
@BobWallace Ok thanks!
Definitely don’t list Harvard when the time comes. You don’t know if you will get into Harvard, and they don’t care if they’re listed on an NMSC application. If you are applying to Tufts and they give NMF scholarship, list them because it could be where you go if Harvard doesn’t work out.
No matter what school you put down for first choice at any time in this process, it will not affect your eligibility for the $2500 award.
@STEMFamily wait really?! Where does it say this? In that case, @albert69 is right and I should put Tufts instead
Dont waste time putting any non-sponsor college on the card.
If they dont sponsor NMF’s then they dont care if a student is a NMF.
@lilypippili … The previous posters are correct. You gain nothing by listing a non-sponsor college as your first choice. NMSC chooses the recipients of the $2500 awards in late January, although they don’t send out notification to those recipients until March 24th by this year’s timeline. Multiple parents and semifinalists who have been through this process before have confirmed with NMSC that whether you have a first choice school listed or still have “Undecided” listed has no bearing on the committee’s decision regarding the $2500 scholarships.
For your situation, I’d recommend you either lists Tufts or Undecided, and I’d lean towards listing Tufts. The way the timeline works if you have Tufts listed prior to Mar 1st, they will be notified of your choice in the first group of institutional notifications that NMSC sends out to schools. NMSC begins notifying $2500 award winners on March 24th. If you are awarded a $2500 scholarship you can use it at any accredited school, so should you be admitted to Harvard you’ll have plenty of time to change your first-choice school prior to the May deadline.
By my interpretation of the NMSC instructions, non-sponsor schools like Harvard probably never know that students list them as first-choice. From the instructions:
Even if they do get notified, NM status will have little or no impact on admissions decisions at Ivies and “Ivy-esque” schools, so in your situation you’re probably better off “hedging your bets” for earlier NM scholarship consideration at Tufts. Depending upon which round of applications you choose for the various schools you might already have an admissions decision or you may be waiting until “Ivy Day”, but in any case nothing will prohibit you from changing your first-choice school if necessary. You should basically have the entire month of April to do so if you wish.
Of course they would know if the student was a $2500 scholarship winner and attended the school, since listing them as first choice is necessary to receive the scholarship.
@BobWallace … Correct. I was just trying to say that listing Harvard (or any other non-sponsor school) initially wouldn’t provide any benefit for admissions since I’m not sure a non-sponsor school would ever be notified prior to admissions decisions coming out that a student had listed them.
If a student were only interested in non-sponsor schools (and thus only the $2500 or possibly a corporate scholarship) they could probably just leave it as “Undecided” until after all admissions decisions were released. They should know by “Ivy Day” (or shortly thereafter given NMSC’s snail mail issues) whether they’ve been awarded the $2500 or not.
<<<
Of course they would know if the student was a $2500 scholarship winner and attended the school, since listing them as first choice is necessary to receive the scholarship
<<<
?
@BobWallace Is that true? If a student had listed Yale as his first choice school, but ended up at Harvard, and the student had been a 2500 NMCorp winner, I’m not sure that the student had to list H as first choice.
“Of course they would know if the student was a $2500 scholarship winner and attended the school, since listing them as first choice is necessary to receive the scholarship.”
I think BW means the the student has to list the college where they will be enrolling no later than the mid May deadline, as their “first choice”, in order to receive the scholarship.
Yes - the only way to receive the $2500 scholarship is to have the school where you enroll listed as your first choice by the final deadline.
@Bobwallace So if a student comes off the WL in May or later, and chooses that school, he forfeits the 2500?
I’m not sure what the deadline is. From NMSC’s documentation, the May 31 deadline seems to be related to college-sponsored awards only.
Ahh…I guess they will accept a later notification of a school change because of WL.