Financial Dilemma

Parents Forum
81

<p>Correction to earlier post, #75, regarding the listing of selection committees in the Annual Report for NMF, the end of the report does list a committee of 14 individuals for the Merit (and 8 for the Achievement awards), but it is unclear at which stage this committee is involved; the commended, semi-finalist and/or finalist. </p>

<p>My guess is they are not that involved in the early stages, and since there is little transparency here, it is hard to know how the early rounds are decided. Since there are 1.3 million entrants, 36,000 commended and another 16,000 semi-finalists, it is safe to assume some shortcuts are taken and that the 14 committee members lend an air of authority to the matter.</p>

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<p>I wanted to just pass on some interesting info about the number of NMSF by statate in the afore mentioned NMSC Annual report:
The table shows a list of all the states, the number of entrants, the number of commended and the number of semi-finalist(the group that will go on to fill on to become Finalists, roughly 94%)</p>

<p>If you are from the follwing states in 2005 there were over 2% entrants in your state receiving the semi-finalist designation:</p>

<p>Utah 3.8%
Mississippi 2.8%
Oaklahoma 2.6%
Arkansas 2.5%
West Virginia 2.5%</p>

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<p>the early rounds are all test scores sorted by computer by state. Last year, every national score of 202+ meant guaranteed Commended, (regardless of state residency). Further, if the score exceeded the individual state cutoff, the student resident was guaranteed Semi-Finalist. Moving from Semi- to the Finalist stage is where the essay, gpa, rec, and SAT validating score, matter.</p>

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<p>raising2 -- NM Semifinalist status is decided by a test score only. The cutoffs are different in each state, but everyone who achieves the cut off score for their state has Semi-finalist status. </p>

<p>Advancing to Finalist status is rather simple:
* The student has to take the SAT and score reasonably well, but not as high as they did with the PSAT.
* The student has to submit a short essay.
* The student has to submit a recommendation from their school principal (or other appropriate school official).
* I believe that a school transcript is also submitted, though it's possible that the principal simply reports the GPA (I don't remember).</p>

<p>It is a fairly automatic process -- about 94% of the semifinalists advance to finalist status. </p>

<p>The only place a committee is going to be involved using any sort of subjective criteria is deciding which of the finalists receive NM-Sponsored scholarships. The corporate & college-sponsored scholarships are not decided by National Merit, but by the respective sponsors. For what its worth, students can only officially receive one of the three types of scholarships, and the corporate/school scholarships are usually worth more money .... so at least when my son went through the process, I was hoping that he would NOT get the NM award, and I was glad when he got the scholarship sponsored by his college. (We thought $8000 was better than $2500).</p>

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<p>We too are glad son was awarded a NM award from his school (USC). They seemed to indicate they wouldn't have penalized him if he happened to get a NM award from the NMC to & would still give him the 1/2 tuition Presdential Scholarship of $16K+ for 4 years even if he got the NMC scholarship of $2500. We figure his grades & class rank hurt him but are happy anyway.</p>

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<p>Please read the 2004-05 Annual Report if you want accurate information on the awards program, page 16 gives a very detailed description, something not possible to include here on this site. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.nationalmerit.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nationalmerit.org/&lt;/a> see "Annual Report"</p>

<p>What I found interesting is the breakdown of awards by state, with Utah at the top with 3.8% of their students receiving Semi-finalist/Finalist designation and a state like Connecticut with a mere 0.7% of their students receiving the same status. California is on the lower end too, just 1.3% of students from California receive NMSF/F status. </p>

<p>So, I would not get too whipped up if I lived in the follwing states: Alaska, Connecticut, California, Colorado, Delaware, Indiana, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Montana, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, N. Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, because your chances of becoming a NMSF or NMF are 1.3% or lower.</p>

<p>On the other hand, if you live in Utah you are three to four times more likely to be NMSF/F along with Alabama, Arkansas, District of Columbia, Idaho, Iowa, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, New Mexico, Oaklahoma, and West Virginia, than your counterparts above.</p>

<p>The only secret here is the states use different criteria and the list of sponsors affect the outcome of the results, because it is hard to believe that only 0.7% of students in Connecticut are as smart in comparison to the 3.8% in Utah!</p>

<p>Also, Page 7 of the Report, lists the fields of study of the students receiving grants, needless to say they mimic the list of corporate sponsors on pages 18-23.</p>

<p>The corporate sponsers not only provide specific sponsorships, they also provide the funding for the entire NMSC, the corporation that provides undesignated sponsorships to students. It only requires looking at this list of corporate sponsers to see if you might have a chance. </p>

<p>Also, all of the astonomical finacial aid offers everyone talks of being deluged with from State schools, well the list of schools is right here in the report. These are schools that need the NMF boost for their own rankings and of course their seats in classrooms. So this list is a great tool to see if you are interested in any of these colleges, for is you do end up being a NMSF/F you may get one of the "free-rides" talked about on CC. </p>

<p>The Annual Report Sponsers list(p18-24) also reveals which colleges will NOT give you any merit aid for NMSF/F status. Places such as the HYP, Brown, Barnard, UC Berkeley, Smith, Stanford, to name a few. (See pages 29-31, if the college does not have a number after it, they do not sponsor the NMF designation) </p>

<p>Signed out of this thread.</p>

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<p>raising...if you haven't left yet, Utah is ACT land (~70% of kids take ACT in that state), so state-state comparisons are apples-oranges. Also, states have different groups of kids who take the tests...for example, the Cal States require SAT or ACT as well, so it not surprising that in our state, with a lot of english language learners, there is a real bell curve -- CR is hard enough for native borns. Perhaps the kids in CT prep for the psat, who knows, but, gotta be careful when looking at such tables.</p>

<p>The rest of the UCs are dropping out of the sponsorship program next year to put the $$ into more outreach and Regents.</p>