Can someone explain the National Merit process to me?

<p>mom2collegekids,
so your son did not put anything down on his first choice college?
I feel it is tricky to get either “official” one if you qualify for both. I work for a company that give each NMF kid of its employees a corporate scholarship, but D’s target college gives half of tuition to NMF( not sure if it gives all NMF). Of course this school is not her reach school. So for now she will put “undecided” on first choice college…</p>

<p>Is there any GPA range that is considered to be “safe” and does it go by weighted or unweighted? I had a rough first year of high school or so, but my more recent transcripts are as competitive as any.</p>

<p>sleepless.</p>

<p>Yes, my son still put Bama as his number one choice.</p>

<p>A corporate scholarship doesn’t require being named “#1” since it’s not a college.</p>

<p>You need to find out if your child’s school choice designates some/all of their scholarship as “official.”</p>

<p>For instance…if the school gives 1/2 tuition ($20k per year), but designates $5000 per year as the official portion, and your corporation only gives $2500, then you’re better off ONLY taking the school scholarship…otherwise your school scholarship will deduct $5k from the half tuition scholarship.</p>

<p>However, if the school’s official portion is only $1k and your corporate one is $2500 per year, then you get both…but the school’s scholarship will be $1k less.</p>

<p>Does that make sense?</p>

<p>Anyway…call NMCorp…they are super helpful with this issue. They managed the whole thing by phone for us.</p>

<p>COLLEGEBOARD -
Nat’l Merit Corp 847-866-5100
NMCorp code 0085 (code to send SAT score)</p>

<p>*Is there any GPA range that is considered to be “safe” and does it go by weighted or unweighted? I had a rough first year of high school or so, but my more recent transcripts are as competitive as any. *</p>

<p>No…there isn’t a minimum GPA.</p>

<p>The issue always seems to be whether there are D’s or too many Cs.</p>

<p>however…if you get notified in January that you didn’t make NMF, then immediately submit an appeal. Last year, some of those that appealed over grades became finalists. </p>

<p>What kind of semester or final grades did you get your first year (don’t care about quarter grades, those don’t show on a transcript).</p>

<p>Thanks mom2collegekids, you explained clearly, I will keep that in mind.</p>