The information on the internet for these Ed decisions are wide open and generally written by the Princeton Review etc. LOL They range from the signed Ed is a āwritten contractā to meh.
On a side note: Harvards Endowment
ā¦Assets under management: 53.2 billion USD (2021) which increases exponentially each year.
Meanwhile, they continue to extort application fees from middle class Americans by sending mailers to those they have no intentions of admitting which I find deplorable.
Harvard will continue to attract many of the brightest and could easily be 100% free to all those they accept. (they have no need for fees)
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YMMV, caveat emptor, etc. The 2 ED agreements Iāve signed have been what Iāve expected- ābindingā* agreements with the out of insufficient funding.
*I havenāt seen an agreement that Iād describe as āmehā, though Iām not sure what that means exactly. None of these agreements are legally binding, however.
On another side note, Harvard offers neither early decision consideration, nor any merit scholarships. I hear you about their practices, but donāt consider them germane to this conversation.
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I believe my point is that these āeliteā schools recruiting practices are nefarious to begin with. I therefore put very little value in their wishes or claims of what is expected reference ED. (it means āmehā or āwhateverā to me)
Therefore, āfinancial reasonsā is the obvious out. 
Has anyone received NMF confirmation yet? I saw on the UNC thread several posters stating NMF, but I didnāt think it was coming out until next week. Just curious if some schools have received notification.
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Not here.
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I think the notifications come out next week. But I heard that rejection letters went out earlier this month so I think many are assuming no news is good news at this point. Weāre definitely anxious to see the "official " notification come through though!
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My daughters school has next week off so we will have to wait until the week of the 13th. And as slow as they were to tell her about NMSF status we might get the letter at home first. 
Our school never told us! We saw his name in the press release and pushed them to help with the applicationā¦ā¦
I wish they would send the certificate home!
Wow, that was unfortunate. Good things you were able to find out, otherwise, it would have been unfortunate because the timeframe between the announcement and the deadline for application is quite short (let alone the studentās workload during that timeframe)
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My daughterās school was really late getting us the information as well. We knew she would be a NMSF, but she basically had to go to her counselorās office to get the ball rolling for her and the other 10 NMSF at her school!
I think she received the application information with 7 days to go. I phoned National Merit and filled them in on the situation and they gave us an extra 30 days. My daughter got her part in by the original deadline, but the school got their part in ON the day of the extended deadline. It was very stressful for us!!
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SO frustrating. I feel this.
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That is so unfortunate! Thank goodness yāall saw the press release!
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FYIā¦ā¦The College Board has some notification lawsuits against it. We had issues last year. Thankfully it was resolved, but sadly we had to jump through many, many hoops to resolve their mistake.
crazy. hard to understand why a school is notified and not a parent.
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I didnāt know this was happening with Semi-Finalist levels, but the media has been covering the issue of withholding information for Commended students in Virginia (especially at Thomas Jefferson) for a few months. One reporter doing the story found out her own son was commended several years ago and was never told!
Number of Virginia schools reporting delayed National Merit recognition grows amid probe - ABC News.
I canāt speculate on the reasoning for withholding the information. The foundation should just notify students directly. That is what College Board does for National Recognition.
Edit- the reporter who found out about her own son at TJ is not in that link. I canāt remember which publication it was in, but it was about this same event.
There was a separate, somewhat contentious thread on this a month or two ago, focusing on the TJ situation. The school appeared to have failed to notify commended students, intentionally or unintentionally.
However, the practical impact of the notification omission is likely minuscule because the students probably would have applied to schools where NMF, NMSF and NM commended applicants are dime a dozen.
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Iām not aware of any schools that award scholarships based on NM Commended distinction. Are there any that do?
I didnāt think there were either, but I donāt know about every stateās schools, so maybe someone does. I, too, was surprised that the news coverage seemed to focus on Commended being a scholarship thing. There are major scholarships for College Board Recognition groups, but that goes directly to students anyway so they knew about it.
I was only linking the previous news coverage of the issue because a few posters yesterday were talking about schools not informing students about NMSF status, which I had not heard before, but I knew there had been some issue with Commended announcements. I definitely did not/do not want to open any controversial rehash of what sounds like a thread that was already talked about in December!
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Last year, we got multiple congratulations from colleges my DD applied to before the official announcement. Most of the them were addressed to NMFs.
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