Apart from potential scholarship opportunities, any level of National merit recognition (commended, semi-finalist, etc) looks great on a college application, especially now that students can’t submit SAT/ACT scores. They can list this as an award, and it shows they are strong test takers without providing numbers.
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There are also some schools that do throw money at semi-finalists or finalists. There are a fair number of moderately respectable schools and some highly respectable ones too that give full tuition or other significant merit specifically for National Merit alone.
Alas, none of said schools were able to entice my finalist to accept said money. Sigh…
This was posted on the NHRP Discussion thread yesterday:
Just to confirm, Cal Poly SLO just confirmed National Recognition Hispanic Scholars will get a $3000 renewable scholarship. I just had to email them proof and I sent in my award certificates
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Ha. Same issue! Still, I think it’s helping him with his application results.
Thanks! I remember my older son got something like that offered, but went elsewhere.
@Whyalisa - I think absent my kid’s NMF status, we would be having a VERY ugly admission season (there were some serious grade stumbles during COVID/online learning). I am glad yours is having some admissions luck from his status as well!
Thanks! If they are offering it to NHRP, they are likely offering it to NMF as well. 
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He is both, so that works for me!
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That would be fantastic! The original offer of aid we got was only loans. A little NMF would be wonderful. Fingers crossed!
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Are we to assume that they have sent all acceptances at this point?
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They did! He’s got a new renewable NM scholarship in there that wasn’t there yesterday. Yay!
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I would say yes
We live in a new world, where anyone can essentially learn anything, for free. She could pursue anything outside the confines of the SE major. The problem with doing it as part of the curriculum is that any time spent on something other than the set curriculum dilutes technical depth and breadth. It’s a tough balance.
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I’'ll eat almost anything as long as they go easy on the cilantro.
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That’s what I’m afraid of.
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Thanks for the heads up, my daughter got that in today as well.
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I was in Spain one November and asked a shop owner if they had “Horchata” from the Spanish I memorized. I wasn’t sure what she said in response, but she pointed to the exit door while she was talking. I imagined that I must have insulted her, and was being shown the door.
So I told my daughter that we should leave.
Once we got outside, I said to my daughter that I didn’t know what the lady was saying. My D said to me that she said: “we only have it in the summertime, but we could try next door”
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Is admissions office closed during their spring break? I assume there will be no updates next week if they are in fact closed.
It seems like they’d want this all done and sorted before spring break.
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Not necessarily. I think the school wants you to think that, so there is some stability in students sticking with what they were accepted for. A lot of people have discussed how hard/easy it is to switch majors in posts from prior years. Many people said it is still easy to switch within the college of engineering. In the 1990’s at slo, I was able to switch from aero to mechanical without a problem and my wife switched from computer to electrical without a problem.
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