This is our family. Our district has very few NMFs and I just assumed that only geniuses qualified so my older kids didn’t take the PSAT because we thought it was a waste of time. My D20 is much younger and I found out more about PSAT/NMF on the homeschooling forum I belong to (she was homeschooled 8-10th grade). I really regret not having my older kids take the PSAT now - I am certain at least one of them would have easily gotten NMF.
Good for them! It was encouraged at our school but the pitch was poor. Mostly saying how its good practice for the SAT and there was a small blurb about scholarship opportunities, but very vague.
@TheVulcan Sorry to hear that. I think some schools could do a better job with their pitch and the opportunities out there.
my son has always wanted to go to my alma mater in florida. i scanned their “scholarships” webpage years ago and noticed the NMSF scholarships. otherwise, i don’t know how i would have ever known.
also, at a “rising 9th grader” meeting at our school (he was in 8th grade), i was very anxious for info about the NMSF process. the GC told me “no one gets that really” so basically don’t worry about it. good grief! we figured it out for ourselves and he got NMSF… no thanks to our GC tho.
Oops! Yes. 
That’s what I was told when I inquired my kids’ HS during their sophomore PSAT. It’s until the summer before their junior when someone asked me about their PSAT scores and mentioned the NMSC, I then realized that it’s not JUST a “practice test”. I don’t quite understand why schools not giving out the whole picture and encouraging kids to do better in their PSAT.
I wish Our school gc had told us about the full ride scholarships that are available to nmf. We were completely in the dark as my other two kids were not nmsf.
We honestly had no clue either. DD is our oldest and it was only after she qualified for NMSF that I asked what it was all about. Our school said “well if she’s a finalist she will get a $2000 scholarship”. It has only been from this board that we learned anything about full rides or tuition paid. No one told us a thing about it, and honestly I wonder if our GC even knows. Obviously, our school hasn’t had a NMSF or NMF in many, many years. We live in a rural area where the main concern is just getting kids to graduate so in some respect I understand the lack of focus in this area but I also feel like DD missed out on opportunities because we didn’t fully understand what opportunities she could have. We only just applied to UCF 2 weeks ago and we missed a lot of deadlines for other schools. I wished we had known about it last year when we were visiting schools.
My $.02 on why school don’t really inform kids about the PSAT and National Merit is back to the “everyone gets a trophy” mentality. They don’t want to push for something that’s only realistic for a very few kids.
I’m still trying to figure out why some schools have so many NM kids and others so few. The school my kids attend doesn’t really give much info on national merit and the PSAT is only mandatory in 10th grade and not 11th - makes no sense to me! This year they had 51 NM kids out of a class size of around 700 and home zone school has a record 4 NM kids out of a class size of over 500 both are public non magnet schools.
We also were not aware until after finding this forum last fall of the potential benefits, and our high school was seemingly also unaware. When we found out that DC had made NMSF (through the local newspaper), I scanned the other area schools. It turns out that our high school had 4 students named NMSF, while the other 4 schools in the district had 10+ each. I believe that the demographics of our school are such that the counselors just are focused on other matters, as they hadn’t had any NMSF in recent years. Now that I know, I’ve been telling the parents with younger kids that the PSAT in 11th grade can be a great opportunity.
That said, I applaud our school for paying for everyone in 9th/10th and 11th take the PSAT. Hopefully we’ll see more students make NMSF in the future.
My son was the only NMSF at his school in a class of 427. I know of 2 classmates that are in his IB Diploma program with similar academic stats that did not take the PSAT as a junior. He likely would have had company but they were unaware of the opportunities.
@twinmommy, it’s not too late for Univ of Alabama or UCF!
I think University of Alabama Huntsville has rolling admissions and I believe they have a good NMF scholarship too.
Still no word from anyone’s school? It’s very quiet here. Oddly DD received a letter in the mail today from one of the schools she had applied to and it said “Congratulations on being a National Merit finalist”. And contained instructions on how to name them as first choice and the award she would get for that. I’m assuming they just sent it out to everyone who was NMSF, thinking they would move on but it was odd and I don’t want her hopes to get too high until we know for sure. Colleges don’t find out before us, right? Fingers crossed for good news tomorrow. It’s DD’s birthday tomorrow and that would be cool…so long as it’s not bad news tomorrow!!!
I am a homeschooling parent and haven’t got anything yet. I will certainly post once the letter comes.
@3scoutsmom - do you see a lot of the NMFs at your school taking advantage of the scholarship opportunities? DD’s school had 28 NMSFs out of 330 in the class, but she doesn’t think anyone else is pursuing the full ride NM schools. She’s at a public magnet (if you remember we’re from Austin you can probably guess which) - meanwhile the school she would have tracked to only had one NMSF out of about 500 in the class. At DD’s school, all kids take PSAT 9,10, and 11. I’d kind of assumed everyone did that until I started reading here.
I teach at my daughters school. We are a small private high school. We had done the ACT 9-t because we like to monitor progression. They screwed around with their tests a few years ago and destroyed any linkage. So we switch to PSAT 9-11. But ACT has fixed their issue and since 99.9% of our students take the ACT we are switching back next year. PSAT will be offered on a Saturday to whoever wants it, with information provided to them about what it entails. With 3 of the top 4 girls in a class of 85 still having NMF schools on their top radar at this point in the college choice game they have a lot of precedent to point to.
You can let them know so that they can tell you verbally the delta in merit award, but they won’t officially change it until NMSC sends the list to them and your child lists them as number one choice with NMSC
UCF is rolling admission so applications still being accepted.