Yes. U Alabama does stack outside scholarships with NMF package. My DS had a couple of additional scholarships, totaling like $2-3k, freshman year.
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My son has officially made his decision: Heâs going to UCF! As of earlier this week, 19 OOS students had put down their deposits, so about half the OOS NMF slots are still available. Last year they ran out of scholarships right after the NMF reception, which is March 24th this year.
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Congratulations! Thatâs where mine are going as well 
Are you going to the dinner next month?
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Also, thereâs a UCF NMF Facebook group you can join if you havenât already.
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Weâll probably be at the reception â itâs leading into my kidsâ Spring Break, so we are looking at making a week of it down in Florida.
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Super helpful conversation with NMSC today about the scholarship process for those Finalists trying to determine designating schools/undecided by March 1st.
First off, beginning March 1, NMSC begins to match students with corporate scholarships first. Then they move on to the $2,500 NM Scholarships. If selected, the awards will appear in a studentâs portal on a rolling basis through May 31st.
According to the person I spoke with, NMF will be considered for Corporate Scholarships and NM Scholarships regardless of College sponsored scholarships offered.
If a student designates a first choice college in their portal March 1st, they can change it at anytime. NMSC will continue to notify colleges of the change on a rolling basis through May 31st. NMF should post the college they plan to attend, even if it is not one that grants NM scholarships.
College sponsored NM scholarships are posted in portals beginning May 1. Once those are posted, a finalist may not be offered any other NM college sponsored scholarship than what was posted, even if the school they decided to attend also offers NM scholarships. If Finalists are undecided, they should change their status to undecided before May 1st.
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I was wondering for National Merit Finalist kids who will be majoring in Computer Science, what schools they have visited and what their impressions were of the program.
So far we have visited UT Dallas, University of Oklahoma, University of Tulsa. Will be going to Alabama, Central Florida, and FIU shortly.
Any input would be greatly appreciated!
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Of the big NM scholarship schools, weâve only visited Maine and Tulsa. Liked both for different reasons. Maine is a program that has nice breadth, and we liked the CompSci professor we met with. Tulsaâs CompSci professor meeting had both my kid and I just⊠
We were so impressed by what they manage to do in a small school in Oklahoma, of all places!
My kid wasnât interested in pursuing his acceptance to Alabama, or any of the schools in FloridaâŠtoo hot, he said, and most are what I feel like may be too big for my kid anyway, so fine with me.
Weâve toured many schools for CompSci (we have twins both pursuing CS). I am thrilled with my NMFâs options so far. I feel like he canât go wrong!
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Oh! And Iâd love to hear what youâve thought of UTDallas, Tulsa, and UO!
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Locals call it âOUâ (wouldnât want you to confuse anyone 
).
Now that I think about it, it is a little strange, because it is definitely âUniversity of Oklahomaâ and never â Oklahoma Universityâ but it is always abbreviated OU.
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This made me laugh because it is one of my pet peeves. Why is University of Tulsa known as TU? Why is University of Denver known as DU? I could go on but you get the idea. 
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We got to meet with Dr. Mittal at UT Dallas and walked away impressed. If your child has any interest in finance related CS, Goldman Sachs has a big presence there for internships. Not a big sports presence school if that is important. The campus felt very safe as in suburban neighborhood.
We went to the engineering school tour at the University of Oklahoma. Very impressive program, but felt it was geared more towards Chemical Engineering and Petroleum Engineering for obvious reasons geographically and that Computer Science was a up and coming area for them.
University of Tulsa was impressive as well. Huge campus for a school of 3000 kids. Seemed like they had a big focus going for cybersecurity if that is your childâs interest. They put on a great 2 day event. They only require kids to remain in âgood academic standingâ which for us means that our child can focus on LEARNING and not stressed out about maintaining their scholarship.
We are hoping our trip to the Southeast can shed more light to this situation. If anyone has visited Alabama CS, Florida schools CS - would love to hear about it!
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I donât see many people mention it but we had a great NMF visit to USF last week and it firmly cemented it as a top choice for D23.
Waiting to get results from some interview weekends before making final decisions but it definitely reduces the stress to know there is a full COA school where she could see herself attending.
We visited Alabama and UCF from your list. If my kids went to Alabama, they probably would have done MIS instead of CS since it seemed like the much stronger program there.
Mine are enrolling in UCF. You are doing a private NMF tour right? Dr Heinrich will likely be the CS guy you meet with. Very personable, loves his department:) If your dc has any interest in Cyber, I highly recommend visiting with Dr Nederost who is the advisor for the Hack UCF team. We had a great meeting with him. Or if heâs interested in the programming team, maybe ask if you can meet with one of the team members or faculty advisor. The clubs and teams are definitely a strength. We just attended the Engineering Open House and one of the panels was industry folks- lots of internship and job discussion. Great area for it. They seem to be working on improving retention in CS with special programs setup to assist/tutor math and science for those that come in lacking. (This was started after covid when I think they got a lot of kids with not the strongest math backgrounds). As well as adding a more intro cs type class for those without experience. One professor said theyâre also aware of Rate My Professor and have made some changes in that regard especially for the earlier foundation classes.
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Iâd love to hear about your USF visit. Mine didnât like the campus much but mostly wrote it off due to the lack of communication until very recently. They had already moved on. We tried for ages to get a personal tour last year and zero response.
Thank you so much for sharing. That helps a lot. No one here talks about FSU or FIU, is it because of location or strength of program?
Each of the Florida schools seem to have a speciality theyâre known for. UCFs is engineering/cs and hospitality. USF is medical. FSU may be political science or business. But all the schools have multiple programs and they would be perfect for plenty of kids. Mine just didnât like UF or FSU campus or area and couldnât imagine spending 4 years there, so they didnât even apply. Others think they are the prettiest and best campus/areas. 
FIU- Miami is really expensive and FIU iseems to appeal to a very international student group. We drove by it once but I donât really know much about it.
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And not related to the academics, but the guaranteed priority housing at ucf for NMFs is a big deal. Iâm not sure where youâre from but Florida has been exploding with so many people moving here. Itâs a tough housing market and expensive in the Orlando area. Kids start signing leases the fall of freshman year to make sure they have a place for sophomore year which is stressful as theyâre getting situated. NMFs can stay in the same dorm room all 4 years if they want, and never move out if they do the Towers apartments with the year lease. And no meal plan is required for any student.
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Thank you so much for that info. We are on the West Coast so this information is great.
Itâs going to be a crazy few months but grateful for these options. Best of luck to everyone!
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Has confused this non-local MANY times!!!