Thank you! Where did your D19, end up going? Is she happy where she is at? It’s such a hard choice at 17 to know exactly what best fits you but sounds like your D knew which is great and says a lot about her.
Yes! I do feel like I am going crazy! My oldest DS graduates in 21 and to be honest, I feel like I’m much further behind with him then I was with her at this point. I had no idea it would take this long to finalize things! I hope your D has a nice visit. We will have to keep in touch and compare notes. Safe travels to you!
@Icky19: We’re from MN too! I’m curious to get your feedback on UCF. We did not get with the program quickly enough to apply to UF and are also looking at UTD. We applied for our other schools RD so we won’t have decisions until April. That said, most of them do not offer much by way of merit aid.
I still don’t understand the explanation above about being named a NM Scholar. Should she choose a NM sponsor college (any one?) by March 1 just to be sure she don’t get offered a $2500 one and then change it before May 31 if needed? We still don’t have any guarantee about receiving the college-sponsored one though, right? D20 is applying for UCF right now and it looks like a call with Luke is in order.
@MamaFx3 You don’t want to try to avoid being awarded the $2500 scholarship. Luke at UCF should be able to explain it to you, but if your kid gets that award, accept it. The Benacquisto just subtracts the award from the Benacquisto funds. You can have both. They just don’t stack.
Ok, because getting even the $2500 award would make her a NM SCHOLAR, right?
Absolutely!
[quote=“Reebtoor, post:1621, topic:2026624”]
Why do only half the NMF get named Scholars? Because many don’t go to a college which sponsors college-based scholarships. My D19 is NMF & on a full ride because of it but did not go to a school that officially sponsors NMSC scholarships. Thus, she is not a Scholar.
So @Reebtoor was your student offered a NM scholarship (either the $2500 one or the college-sponsored)?
Let’s say my kid chooses ABC (a NM College Sponsor) as first choice by March 1.
- Gets accepted to ABC and DEF, and likes DEF (also a NM College Sponsor) much better as long as she receives DEF’s more generous NMF scholarship.
- Even if D20 changes first choice to DEF by April 10, for example, there is still only a 50-50 chance of receiving the NM Scholarship, right?
If she does not receive a NMSC scholarship from DEF by May 31, she can still change back to ABC and hope to be selected by that school with a 50-50 chance?
I see the MINIMUM number the schools expect to offer annually. Should that be taken into consideration when choosing the first choice?
@Mamafx3 I believe you are overthinking this and making it more complicated than it has to be. Have your kid wait until she receives all relevant acceptances then decide which one she likes best and make that her first choice school before May 1. (Technically, they say before May 31, but you need to make your actual college choice by May 1, anyway, unless your kid is coming off a waitlist, I suppose.)
Thank you @amsunshine. I have been accused of overthinking before! 
No worries - this is exciting but stressful! We are all here to help each other through it. ?
She’s at the University of Alabama -Huntsville. When you give them a copy of the finalist letter, they give you their Platinum Scholarship which is full tuition, room & board, & $500 to cover fees for 8 semesters. [Not as good as UCF’s full COA but not a bad offer.] My daughter is living the dream. She loves the other kids, the professors, & the town. We live in farm country/small town, and she adapted to a school of just under 10,000 really well. It is hard to know what school is the best fit. UCF won out on paper but UAH had her heart.
@MamaFx3 UCF awarded her their $2500 scholarship since she still had them listed as #1 in the portal, but she had to decline it since she was attending elsewhere. Her school is not a NMSC partner school so she could not get a college-sponsored NMSC scholarship from them. She did not get the NMSC scholarship.
There is a date where the sponsor colleges send out their scholarships. It is listed in the NMSC paperwork somewhere. You want to have the college your kid has chosen listed as first choice in the portal before then so as to get a scholarship from that school (assuming that school is a NMSC partner school). I don’t know the date, but it isn’t as early as March.
Thanks for the replies! Also, @2tiredmomma and @Icky19, we are also in the same boat. My girl started out thinking she wanted to go far away, but now doesn’t think too far. Out of state public schools have not had great offers, but she has had wonderful offers from some elite private schools; however, the delta is still very high given the COA and that we do not qualify for any need-based aid. She is NOW considering FSU and USF, but I’m not sure any of us are ready for that distance, as we are in MA in a small rural town. I also wonder/worry about safety. We just don’t know what to do, as she would like to consider them due to wonderful NMF programs, but she has limited time to go to more campuses because she is in a show every weekend in March, has school visits planned in two different states the first weekend in April, one the next weekend, and then leaves for Paris and Barcelona with her school until the last week in April. Then it’s basically time to matriculate! This is all so stressful, and we didn’t know about many of the full ride schools when she did all of her applications in November. Our guidance department had told her that basically everything had to be turned in by early action deadlines to be considered for merit. Never were we told that that was just standard merit and not her NM status, so she thought she was finished applying after that time, until some of the big package description letters started coming in as NMSF and now NMF. So, she sits here debating about whether to apply to FSU and USF at the 11th hour…
Hi all. I know D20 and S20 are daughter and son, respectively, graduating 2020, but what are DD and DS, and even some of the other abbreviations? Thanks
DD = dear daughter; DS = dear son
@MamaFx3 the way NMSC told me it works is that once you out down a first choice school (as early as the March 1 round), they start to consider you for the school sponsored awards. If your child is given one, it is only for that school. Then if they go in and change their number one choice, they forfeit the school sponsored award and cannot qualify for a different schools award. This has been the reason we have remained undecided, as we are hoping for a corporate award from my husband’s employer, as it is higher. But from all of these comments, it sounds like the Florida schools make the student an NM Scholar anyway. The NMSC would still consider the student a scholar since they had previously awarded a different school sponsored award.
Our experience too! I read the NMSC booklet cover to cover and checked out the national merit opportunities at schools D20 had already identified, but really nothing to clue us in about the amazing benefits at out-state schools. There is so much you just don’t know you don’t know! I am a firm believer in things generally work out the way they are supposed to but this has been hard to navigate for sure.
DD= Dear Daughter and DS= Dear Son. I could be wrong, but I believe the etymology is from the mommy blogs that started to be a thing right around the time when our 16-18 year old kids were born…sob…sniffle…baby DS…
Question about this - does this apply also for the competitive school awards? (BU, Fordham, USC) D21 is very interested in Fordham but it would only be doable if she got one of the NMF awards. Seems like in order to be considered, she’d have to put Fordham as 1st choice by 3/1, then if she doesn’t get it, bye bye Benaquisto or Arizona? Can someone confirm this?
just a reminder that texas tech in lubbock gives big $ for nm. i think it’s full ride. not a lot of mention about texas tech on these boards so just putting this out there.
With Fordham, your kid applies first and may get offered the NMSF award on admission. If you want to accept, you would then indicate your first choice to NMSC. No need to indicate earlier than that. IOW, Fordham offers the award, not NMSC, and the offer has nothing to do with which school your kid indicates as first choice. I believe that’s how it works with most of the sponsor schools. So, wait for your kids’ decisions before indicating a first choice with NMSC – there’s no advantage that I know of to doing it earlier. On the other hand, in the hypothetical you posed, if your kid indicates Fordham as first choice in March, for instance, and Fordham doesn’t give your kid the scholarship, this doesn’t impact other schools’ decisions because they don’t know who your kid selected with NMSC in March.