Has anyone visited either of these Florida schools in person recently - UCF or USF?
I’ve seen some older comments that travel costs could be paid (USF), or at least hotel (UCF). I’m hoping to arrange a few tours for D22, and sent a direct question to USF last week about whether they offer any assistance arranging a visit, but possibly because of the holidays I haven’t heard back yet. I don’t know if there are magic words, or if I should simply be grateful these two schools are still offering NMF packages to OOS students. I don’t want to be pushy, but perhaps it just takes asking directly. It adds up trying to get to Texas, Florida, New Mexico. I may have to rely on virtual tours while we continue to narrow down the options. Any advice is appreciated!
I don’t know about UCF, but we have reached out a couple of times to USF to try to arrange an OOS visit. Recently we received communication that the person who coordinates this visits has been out on emergency leave and that they would send out information about scholar visits to all NMSF that applied to USF after the first of the year. Hopefully we will receive the email this week or next.
I actually asked the same thing to the scholarship coordinator at USF. This is her exact response:
“Congratulations on your National Merit Semifinalist status. USF will resume the National Merit Scholars Experience visits in January 2022. Students and one parent will later in the fall by able to select dates and start the travel planning process. We will notify admitted National Merits after Fall 2022 decisions release in November of further information.”
I havent been notified though. I’ll send another email.
Please let me know if anyone hears anything back from USF. Glad I’m not ‘doing it wrong’ and this is across the board. Also, my D22 is having trouble getting the honors app from UCF and hasn’t received a response yet.
@imclassof2022 I have been trying to get hold of Winsome since October to set up a scholar experience. I sent multiple emails and left multiple voicemail messages for her. We had originally hoped to visit in November. She finally responded in December that she had been out on emergency leave. She said that the scholars experience would resume for spring 2022 and that they would send out an email “at the top of the year” to NMSF applicants about how to schedule them. We had hoped to visit over Presidents Day in February since that is the last high school holiday my daughter has that USF isn’t also observing. We have not received an email and Winsome has not replied to my new emails and messages. I called the admissions office to try to talk to someone else to see if they could help, but nobody seemed to know what to do or who to escalate to. I don’t really know what to do at this point. USF is about to fall off of the list because my daughter can’t get excited about a place she hasn’t seen. It seems that recruitment of OOS NMSF is not a priority this year.
I got the email from Winsome today as well. It doesn’t say what time the webinar will be on Thursday, if anyone else knows what time, please let me know so I can plan.