My daughter just made it to the next round of my company’s national merit scholarship. It’s only $2500, but it would be nice for her to win. I work for a giant corporation with over 20K employees. I wonder how many people in the company actually have a high school senior (with a decent PSAT score, I guess)? Is she competing with 5 kids or 5000? Do people actual win these?
Congratulations to your daughter for qualifying for NM. Perhaps you could call HR, or whoever handles the awards at your company, to better assess her odds of receiving their scholarship?
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My S23 just got his notification today as well. While I gather it’s company specific, It’s my understanding that most that are nominated end up with the award assuming they meet the other requirements (grades, essay, etc). Congrats and best of luck!!
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Just saw this on a press release from the NMSC
About 950 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards will be provided by approximately 180 corporations and business organizations for Finalists who meet their specified criteria, such as children of the grantor’s employees or residents of communities where sponsor plants or offices are located
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I hope you’re right!!!
My S15 was a recipient of my employer sponsored Corporate National Merit Scholarship. “Big Red Logo” company (not The Coca-Cola though) I worked for at the time awarded several small scholarships a year and one really, really huge one, lol. He got a smaller one, around $2,000 a year, but in addition to our GA merit based Zell Miller & Hope it made his education free at GaTech.
You may never know how many people participate in the same round with you - but they may be able to disclose last year’s numbers to you. Usually this information could be found in Company Foundation’s report or in press releases.
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@RussianMom - thanks for the suggestion! I was able to locate information on our corporate foundation archives on the numbers
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Son won this, but then I heard that everyone at Dad’s engineering firm, who made National Merit Finalist got $2500. There weren’t too many candidates, so I am assuming that the number was less than 20.
Congratulations!
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My daughter is not a merit finalist at all - she just got a “commendation” - that’s why this thing feels like it’s not really going to happen. Fingers crossed.
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