<p>If I send it to them, though they offer no scholarships, will they like me? Will I get more mail? Any advantage?</p>
<p>Please- from someone who did this last year?</p>
<p>Yale doesn’t participate in the program. You’re better off choosing the two schools you’d like National Merit Corp to notify from among colleges that do participate.</p>
<p>thank you thank you</p>
<p>Yale is an option to select. So, does it participate in the program or not?</p>
<p>What list are you looking at? Here’s the 2009 Official Guide. (I can’t find a 2010 Guide.) See page 18 for the list of colleges that are NMS sponsors. Yale is not on it. Has something changed? <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf</a></p>
<p>If a student receives the 2.5k award from NM, that can be applied to any school, including Y. Other than that, Y does not participate in NM, nor does it care if you name it as one of your 2 NM schools.</p>
<p>My daughter was faced with this decision last year. It is basically a question of whether Yale will care that you “demonstrated interest” by listing it as your first choice. My conclusion after reading a number of CC threads about this was that there would be no strategic admissions advantage to listing Yale as her first choice school, even though it was in fact her first choice. She listed Northwestern instead, which was another school she liked, and which probably does care more about demonstrated interest. She did get some mail about her NMS status and she did get admitted to NU. She also got into Yale, so obviously not listing Yale did not hurt her enough. And as entomom said, she will transfer her 2.5K NMS award from NU to Yale, so there will be no financial loss.</p>
<p>Ah, that’s probably the source of the confusion, entomom.</p>
<p>The best schools to name are schools that are eager to recruit National Merit students. That leaves out all highly selective schools, which get many applications from NM kids. While the elites do like seeing the honor on an applicant’s resume, it has far more impact at colleges that see fewer applications from NM honorees. Make your choices strategically.</p>
<p>Edit: Cross-posted with vicariousparent. My son also named NU as one of his Natl Merit choices. And yes, go for schools that care about demonstrated interest. Yale doesn’t. When you visit campus, you’re not even asked to sign in.</p>