<p>I never really looked at my financial aid that closely my first few years, just knew I got some money. Now my corporate sponsored National Merit award ($12000 for 4 years) is called National Merit Scholar on my aid package. I'm confused, aren't National merit scholars the top bracket (that I wasn't a part of when I took the PSAT). I only got the scholarship because it was given out to the top 20 I believe at my dad's work place. But that's not a National Merit Scholar right? Semantics I know, but I was just curious</p>
<p>From Nat’l Merit Corp website:
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<p>It’s probable that you received this type of award. If that’s the case, it being a National Merit awarded scholarship, I would call you a National Merit Scholar. My opinion.</p>
<p>Technically in the eyes of NMSC, there are two different scholarships, the National Merit Scholarships and the Special scholarships. Some colleges may not recognize (or choose not to recognize the difference) and consider any scholarship coming through NMSC as national merit scholarship, even though some could be special scholarships or National Achievement scholarship etc. This could give the college some bragging rights, though NMSC may not consider that accurate.</p>
<p>If you call up NMSC, they will not use the “National Merit Scholarship” to describe as a “Special Scholarship” as they could open up all sorts of problems. Let us say the cut off for your state was 220 and you got 218 and got a special scholarship. If they consider you a National Merit Scholar, some other student with 219 from your state can claim they should also be a National Merit Scholar. So NMSC needs to be very careful.</p>
<p>On the other hand, let us say a company has budgeted 10 scholarships for the year and there are only 7 NMF’s. Rather than allow those 3 scholarships to go waste, NMSC and the company have an agreement that those 3 scholarships will be called special scholarships, so that more students get money.</p>
<p>That said, you can call yourself a National Merit scholarship winner but you cannot call yourself a National Merit Finalist (or even National Merit Semi Finalist). Some schools will report it differently i.e # of NMS and # of NM Special Scholars separately. In some cases the FA office may not know the difference but the school may report it differently. It really does not matter, take your money and be thankful that you were able to get a scholarship.</p>
<p>Are you saying that you didn’t make NMSF/NMF? Or are you saying that you did, but your PSAT score wasn’t super high (like 235)?</p>