<p>Sorry to hear that your D missed the cutoff. However if her SAT or ACT score is high (or she can pull off a high score in the near future) there are a number of other guaranteed and competitive awards that she should be eligible for:</p>
<p>There used to be a thing where NMSC sent out “recommendations” on behalf of commended students to 2 colleges of their choice. That may be what some are thinking of. Those would have gone to non-member institutions. </p>
<p>Even though you need to have a first-choice college to be eligible for a 2500 award, if it’s not a member institution, they may not get notification that you’ve named them as your first choice, so it wouldn’t have any admission impact.</p>
<p>@lagunal: there is only one first choice (albeit one that can be changed multiple times under NMSC rules). There aren’t totally two different things when it comes to designating a first choice. And there is no opportunity to designate a no #2. I agree that an NMSC award that is not a college sponsored award can be used at any accredited US schools, and that is a reason to ultimately pick a non-sponsor school as first choice, if no sponsored colleges are in the running (so I overstated it when I said there is no reason to pick a non-sponsor school as first choice). But, I was addressing your strategy above, where you indicate that someone should start off picking a non-sponsor school as first choice just to show interest. You wrote: “The best strategy, in my humble opinion, is to
1- pick your personally highest ranked schools (your personal #1 and #2 schools) that are NOT part of the National Merit Scholarship program. Why? Because, those schools will receive letters stating that you chose them as one of your top two and schools love to know that you are not ‘using them’ as a safety school.”
In fact, those schools won’t be receiving such letters (and there isn’t even an option for a #2 school). So, nobody should pick a non-sponsor school as first choice just to show interest. If you show me in the 2014 application or instructions where such a non-sponsor school gets such a letter, I can be convinced otherwise. But, in the meantime, I still argue that designating a non-sponsor school as first choice is not a strategy for demonstrating interest to that school. And it’s not even a strategy for showing interest to sponsor schools that make decisions before March 1 (because that is when NMSC lets them know who designated them as first choice).</p>
<p>@baygracemom
Do not put all your eggs in one basket…my son, too, missed the cutoff for NMSF (partially thanks to his school that chose to give the PSAT on the Thursday of Homecoming Week…how stupid was that!!!) but he scored a 2160 on his SAT and a 34 on his ACT. I’m confident he will be offered enough scholarships for us to be able to send him to the colleges of his choice. By the way, all of his choice are private colleges, out of state.</p>
<p>can anyone help me understand this? so i took the PSAT in 2012 and got a 223. I was ecstatic when I found out because I knew that the past cutoff scores for NJ were 221, 223, but not any higher in recent years. By googling this year’s cutoff scores for semifinalists I saw that NJ’s is 224. I’m so frustrated when I think about the one point that could’ve distinguished me from other commended students. There aren’t going to be any semifinalists at my school this year because I was the only one close to becoming one with my score. Can anyone help me understand why a person with a 204 from West Virginia, let’s say, where the cutoff score is 203, deserves to be a semifinalist more than i do? If i lived in any other state besides NJ and MA, which both had 224 as their 2014 cutoff scores, and had taken the PSAT, this would be a completely different story…</p>
<p>Think of US congressional districts allocation based on population and apply the same rule to graduating seniors from high schools.</p>
<p>There are 16000 slots in total allocated to each state based on the percentage of high school graduates coming out of that state. So if California has 15% of the graduates, they get 2400 (15% of 16,000). The cut off in California is based on the score by 2400th person on their PSAT list.</p>
<p>PSAT is only offered on Wednesday and Saturday.</p>
<p>mbg: sorry you missed the cutoff with such a high score. NM is a private corporation, and they make their own rules about how the semifinalists will be designated by comparing students to others in their own state. Notice that the low scoring states are generally the most rural states where most students do not have access to the same level of educational opportunities that are available in NJ or MA. (Would it be fair if the lions share of all the semifinalists were only from the northeast and CA?) There is really no way to make it fair to everyone.
Even though you didn’t make semifinalist, you should be able to use your high SAT or ACT scores to earn other merit scholarships. You are obviously a top student, and should do well. (Just too bad you didn’t move to NY, PA or WV last year )</p>
<p>So I spoke to the GC at my son’s school and she told me they have not received anything from NM. I sent her the list for Florida and asked her to call them. With only three weeks until the deadline now we have to wait for NM to send another package! This, in addition to college apps, scholarship apps, ECs and, oh yea, school work! Geez!</p>
<p>Jr and Kelly–Have the GC call NM. They will email a copy of the letter with the login numbers. I called NM when school hadn’t heard and they said to have the school call them. THey emailed it right away. Our school still hadn’t “found” the letter even though NM confirmed he was on the list, a few days later DS’s name was in the Sunday paper but still the school hadn’t heard anything. Sure hope that this is not happening to a lot of people.</p>
<p>I am assuming from the post that 2400th person had 223 (CA cutoff).
On this basis, What is the position of a student who received a score of 217?
Thanks
IJMOM</p>
<p>The initial list starts with 50000 students. So 217 could be anywhere within the top 50,000. I would not know where 217 falls within California since we would need a list of Californians among the 50k.</p>
<p>Your SAT scores online have a record. If they were sent electronically, then rest assured, they were sent. Just check your online records. You can always call SAT to double check as the SAT Service has their own “holidays” and do not work those days, especially around Thanksgiving time which just happens to be the same time when many college apps are due</p>
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