Yes, student can receive the same award only once during high school.
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Based on my understanding and speaking to a couple of AOs at schools that still give out these awards, colleges that offer admission/aid to recognition program scholars typically ask for and get a list from college board. Then depending on the school, they either each out, or validate once a student applies to their program. National Merit is very different.
Another thing to remember is that some schools have secondary cutoffs like a minimum SAT/ACT score and/or GPA, which is often recalculated by the university/college. Some colleges have basically stopped giving any aid or very minimum aid and I am worried that more schools will follow that route. There simply isn’t enough money to give out!
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You only get invited once. It is a one time award.
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My daughter will be entering UCF BHC in the fall, and she is a CBNRP Hispanic scholar. Her stats are lower than the average BHC freshman at 1340 SAT/31 ACT, UCF recalculated gpa of 4.4. I am sure the CBNRP and her essay helped with her admission to BHC.
The merit scholarships at ucf are not stackable, and the one for CBNRP is not a lot (was $1000/yr in the past, not sure if it’s still the same) My daughter got the Pegasus gold award ($14k over 4 years). Top merit award is provost ($30k over 4 years). These are all for in state. Numbers for OOS are higher.
The best advice for any merit and bhc at ucf is to apply early. Rolling admissions to bhc and rolling merit. Once the money is gone, it’s gone. People with far higher stats than my kid got zero merit money because they didn’t apply until Feb.
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Thank you for your response Martinezcs! It’s been a whirlwind past couple of weeks since I was last on here. Since reading these posts, found out that he had advanced to the second round of the Hispanic Scholarship Fund so it was a mad scramble to get him on that application and requesting those documents. Then his junior brother found out he was admitted into one of his long-shot summer programs and had to reply a couple days ago and we booked his travel. But we are thrilled for him. Having two so close in age going through the college process is stressful especially since they are not the most attentive to deadlines and email as I had mentioned. There’s a lot of me nagging and asking, did you check your email to see if so-and-so replied to you? And them acting very annoyed.
Your suggestion of creating a specific email for college admissions stuff is great and something I started doing this year for my junior but not until mid year so he still uses his school email for most correspondence which is frustrating.
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This is really helpful info! Would love to know how she came to choose UCF. What did she like most about it? Did she know right away this was the one or was she torn between a few? Does BHC give the college (which is huge) a small college feel at all? My son has a 1450 SAT (will retake in June to try to bump up) and 4.0 unweighted GPA with pretty good EC’s, volunteer work and leadership in gymnastics and honors band. Hopefully he’d have a good shot at getting in the honors college. My sister lives in Orlando so we can probably plan a visit in the summer. His favorite Florida option is Rollins (visited last summer) but might want to look at Nova Southeastern, Wilkes Honors College (Florida Atlantic University) and Florida International University. I’m not sure if they offer much for CBNRP Hispanic Scholar recognition but will look into it. We are from Buffalo but he does like the idea of a warmer climate for college. What will she study? My son is interested in psychology (w/ Spanish minor or double major) and is hoping for a program that offers research opportunities and study abroad. Great advice on applying early! Thanks again for your insight and good luck to your daughter!
So for those who are finalists for the HSF Scholars Program when you (or your child - seems to be mostly parents on this thread) filled in the application and completed the 4 sections of the phase 2 application, was there a final “submit all” type button? Because we didn’t see anything like that when my D submitted it last night. The 4 sections all say completed, but don’t see anything that seems to be an overall submit button and no email received stating that it was complete- but then no email received in phase 1 either.
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We are in state and she has Florida prepaid and Bright Futures, so we told her unless she can go to school for free at a non-Florida school, she had to stay here. Although heavily recruited for swimming (she’s not quite fast enough for D1 in Florida though), she decided she doesn’t really want to swim in college, and she’s very practical, so had no issues with being restricted to in-state schools.
She dislikes UF and FSU (I think because she has spent so much time there over the years at swim meets and camps), so we looked mostly into the lesser known schools. She liked USF, FAU and UCF on paper. But the visit to UCF cinched it for her. She loves everything about it. I personally liked USF better (and they offer HUGE CBNRP stacked scholarships including a study abroad–much better than any others in the state that we found), but UCF has a well known engineering program and she likes the access to NASA and Disney for internships. UCF also has a very good marching band, and that is part of the draw as well, since she loves marching band in HS. The UCF campus is very well planned (supposedly by engineers from NASA in the 60’s) and feels smaller than it is because of the layout.
She hasn’t started, so I can’t speak to BHC other than the honors student day really impressed her (and us) with how much time and effort the honors college puts into making sure the students are well supported in academics and student life. There are only 500 honors students per class, so much smaller environment within the 70k+ overall student body. We have several friends with kids there, and they all love it. She plans to major in mechanical engineering. I’ve been told by other parents that the EXCEL program also helps make the huge school feel smaller, but she has no desire to apply for that.
One of her best friends is going to FAU Wilkes Honor college. My daughter felt FAU was too small with only about 500 students (smaller than her high school class), but I thought it was nice. Although she got into Wilkes, we never visited that campus in Jupiter. I know they had a question about CBNRP on the application, but I don’t know if they have a dedicated scholarship for it. They do offer generous scholarships, but as far as I know, they don’t stack like USF does.
Rollins is lovely, but again, she felt it was too small and wants to go to a school known for its engineering department. FIU “felt like a commuter school” according to my daughter.
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Same here.
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This is super helpful! Thank you so much for all the details. My son is generally leaning towards a smaller school but he likes the idea of a good honors program within a large university if it makes it feel smaller. But UCF is about as big as they get so not sure it will be a good fit, but he’s keeping an open mind.
Sounds like your daughter’s journey resulted in a great match with nice merit too! Appreciate the info on UCF and the other schools she looked at. Very smart to stay in Florida with those nice perks! I’m sure she will shine in college and beyond! Congrats!
Same, the 4 sections completed and no email.
Same here. In fact, was getting nervous bc the button next to his recommender says “accepted” and I wasn’t sure if it meant that she accepted the request for a rec letter or that HSF accepted the counselor’s submitted rec letter. I’m probably overthinking it but my son says he asked her to do one and I know he won’t follow up to ask her if she sent it in. I wish HSF would have sent a final email saying that they have received all of our materials.
I thought I saw somewhere that they have 2 weeks after deadline to get rec letters in tho.
They do have two weeks, it said something like the earlier you submit your part the more time they have. If you submit on the deadline they will only have two weeks.
I guess one thing to note is that my D stopped receiving emails about the pending deadline after she completed all 4 sections, so I guess that is an indicator… 
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My daughter was not able to take the PSAT In California, but qualified as a semifinalist and then finalist with SATs of 1480 and 1500 later.
We however we’re not informed about the National Hispanic Scholar recognition or application
Too late now, right?
She is committing to U Chicago
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Definitely too late for National Hispanic Scholar, although we were referring to the Hispanic Scholarship Fund - Scholar Program finalist round. So, too late for that this year, but that one she can apply for throughout college I believe. First round deadline is in February I think - dont quote me on that.
Although, since your daughter is committing to U Chicago, it clearly didn’t hurt her. However, I do know U Chicago was one of the schools my daughter received an email from congratulating her on her recognition as a National Hispanic Scholar and said she was eligible for some scholarships based on it. She did not apply to U Chicago in the end, so I never found out more about it.
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Thanks. She got the U Chicago scholar and presidential award independent of any other thing. Our struggle was deciding against Berkeley GMP
The scholarship tilted the balance
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For the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, can any income level apply? I thought I saw it said that the monetary award was based on need but didn’t seem to state only certain income levels could apply. Our EFC is about $40K. My S23 would like to apply so I just wanted to be sure he was eligible. Thanks for any insight.
They say that the award is based on merit and the amount is based on need.
We aren’t expecting much. Our EFC is $118k.
But the award is something that can be added to the academic resume and there are internship, job, and mentoring programs.
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My son was notified by the college board he should apply for the National Recognition Award for Small and Rural towns. (Apparently his fall PSAT score qualifies him)
On his College Board profile, He is not opted in to Student Search Service, only BigFuture Scholarships.
My question is, if he applies for the award (which I guess just mean submitting your transcript to prove your GPA is 3.5+) does this mean all his PSAT scores AND SAT scores will be sent to any college he applies to?
I called the College Board but didn’t receive clarification.
If anyone has any insight I’d appreciate it! Thank you-
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It does not send his scores automatically.
He follows the normal procedure for submitting scores to colleges.
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