Class of 2020 National Merit Discussion

you don’t need to. Florida schools will give you the Benaquisto for being a Finalist. The “NM Scholarship” at UCF is relatively small, but it allows you to be a NM Scholar and receive full COA. By the way… UCF is wonderful #ChargeOn

The most important thing about the Essay is to complete it and don’t be a smart aleck. As long as your S doesn’t drool on the paper I think he’s fine.

Congrats to all the Finalists, its an amazing ride, enjoy it. If you have any questions on UCF DM me or simply tag me in a post.

@“liz@robins” Thank you so much for posting about the parental consent email. It was in my junk folder!

I have the 2020 Nevada NMSF list. PM me your email address if you want a copy.

@Phlipper We are stuck on the application page for “College and Career Plans”. It gives 3 options and we have to pick a school to choose #1. Should we just put one of the Florida schools we are interested (UCF), or other state schools that offer generous merit packages so we have 2 options? Do we need to designate a school to get Benacquisto scholarship? TIA!

  1. I plan to attend a regionally accredited college in the United States
  2. I am undecided
  3. I plan to attend an unaccredited college in the United States or a foreign college or university

You have some time. I think the deadline to list #1 choice for UCF was March 31st. I would put my favorite school with a generous NMF scholarship. The schools will be able to tell you what their drop dead deadline is. Most of them list it on their NMF website. You can put undecided as long as you go back and designate your number one by the deadline. The benefit of listing a number 1 is letting them know you’re interested. Some of the Florida schools will provide airfare out to tour!

@mavian you’re welcome! I haven’t done anything yet but will be this weekend

Sadly D’s high school NMSF are getting less. only 4 kids now, last year 7 and the year before 9…They did take the regular PSAT so not sure what is happening.

Is there an official letter of some sort? Son hasn’t shown me one. Collegeboard score sent still says “awaiting fulfillment”…

Have you talked to your son’s GC? If they don’t have anything for you, you should call the NM office directly. Also, we just sent our dd’s confirming score last week and it already says “fulfilled”. It sounds like you might want to check with the College Board on that. Best of luck!

Hi everyone–parent of a freshman NMF at Alabama. Just wanted to offer help if anyone is looking there and has questions, since the posters on CC were a tremendous help as we were going through this last year. I started a thread for questions, but it got moved to the Alabama page–so wanted to just make the offer here too.

Congratulations to all!

@amsunshine Thank you! I just asked S20. It is the piece of paper where his user name and password are printed. I thought there is some certificate-:). As far as score sent, I put that as part of the 4 free scores when he took June subject tests. I have called/emailed collegeboard. I have a case number but no one got back to me. With the letter, there is NMS office phone number, I will give them a call tomorrow to see if they need to download it or something. If Collegeboard got stuck with the score sent, I am not going to pay them again to send the score. I will have ACT sent instead!

Hi @Colorado19and22. Sent you a DM. Thanks for agreeing to field questions!

I see several references to parental consent. Can someone explain what, if anything, needs to be done by the parent, and what the consent is for? Also, what triggers the sending of the parental consent document to a parent?

As you can tell, I’m confused about this. My daughter did create an account last week, and I checked my spam and couldn’t find anything.

@crockett001 the email came from support AT nationalmerit.org (idt you can write email addresses here) and contained a login to a portal where you give consent for kid to move forward in the process. Since the email comes straight from the NMSC I’d think you could call them directly if you haven’t got email.

@whataboutcollege There will eventually be a small (think half-sheet) certificate if your kid makes Finalist. Gotta wait for it…

So in order to receive Benacquisto the student must select one of the FL schools as his first choice school ? Is that somehow binding ?

@FLParent888 I was wondering the same. My daughters are applying to several colleges that don’t offer any National Merit scholarships. They will also be applying to UF and UCF so we’re looking at Benacquisto as well. Is it just better if they leave the first choice school undecided for now, and if so, when do they have to make a selection?

Students can leave it as undecided until they decide on their school May 1. You can also change it. ( parent of an oos UCF )