<p>Hello guys,
I know that the rules of the competition say that college choice should be the one that you intend to go to, but to the colleges that I am applying to (Ivy's), $2500 is pretty much nothing in the long run. I would much rather use my selection on Northeastern, which is my safety school. If I were given a choice between Dartmouth and Northeastern, I'd go to Dartmouth. Would this be okay, and would I suffer any consequences if I used my first choice on a safety?</p>
<p>@drcharisma…I hate to say “it depends”…but it depends. Mostly on the timing of admissions decisions versus the NMSC timeline for announcing scholarship decisions. Here is the link to the timeline for the 2015 Finalists.</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf</a></p>
<p>According to the pamphlet, NMSC begins choosing who will receive the one-time $2500 scholarships at the end of January. Supposedly they choose these approximately 2500 recipients without consideration of whether or not they’ve even chosen a first choice school as this scholarship can be used at any accredited university. If you are chosen for one of these (which you could use at Dartmouth for example) you wouldn’t be notified until sometime after March 26th.</p>
<p>Notification for college-sponsored awards begins on May 1, but NMSC begins notifying universities of Finalists first-choice selections on March 1. If Northeastern only offers a limited number of their unofficial NM scholarships, having them named as your first-choice early COULD impact their decision on whether you receive theirs or not.</p>
<p>In a perfect world, you could list “Undecided” for your first choice school and wait to find out whether or not you were chosen for the one-time $2500 scholarship sometime after Mar 26th. If you aren’t chosen, then change your first choice school to Northeastern and you’ll hopefully still be in a position for them to offer you their larger unofficial NM scholarship.</p>
<p>If you choose to list Northeastern as your first-choice early on, it SHOULDN’T affect things in your case since you’re not choosing between two schools that offer large unofficial scholarship packages. Northeastern would get notified sometime in early March that you’ve listed them. If NMSC has selected you for the $2500 award, you would still be eligible for Northeastern’s larger unofficial scholarship to go along with the $2500. If Dartmouth offers you admission, you have until May 31 to change your first-choice to Dartmouth and use the $2500 there.</p>
<p>My recommendation (unless you have other schools in the mix with large unofficial NM scholarships as safeties) would be to list Northeastern. If your preferential schools are ones where the only NM benefit would come from winning the $2500 award then whatever you have listed as a first-choice school with NMSC will have no bearing on anything regarding those schools. Position yourself as strongly as possible with your preferred safety and hope for the best with the lottery schools admissions.</p>
<p>@Wolverine86
Thank you so much for your informative answer! I guess I will choose Northeastern as my first choice.</p>