<p>There are three types Merit Scholarship awards
(A) 2,500 single-payment National Merit $2500 Scholarships ;
(B) 4,100 college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards for which only Finalists who will attend their respective sponsor institutions are considered.
(C) 1,000 corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards </p>
<p>Since both my husband and I do not work for any corporate sponsors, my D is only possible to get either (A) or (B)</p>
<p>I was told that Winners from camp A usually have much higher caliber than those from camp B.
I was also told that Winners from camp B usually will get much more money than Winners from camp A, like some colleges give $8000 in four years.</p>
<p>My question is: how do they determine who will be A winners and who will be B winners? </p>
<p>These are chosen from ALL Finalists and presumably are those with the strongest applications as far as scores, essays, recommendations, etc. They are also proportioned state by state just like the semi-finalist allotments.</p>
<p>The college-sponsored awards only go to someone who is attending a college that participates. Those awards may be larger than $2500 one time but some are not. The very large awards like half/full tuition and more are awarded by schools (usually less selective, public institutions) who are trying to attract a student who would bring up their average test scores. These awards are generally presented as a “National Merit Scholarship Package” that includes a small part that is an official award as a “college-sponsored” award administered through NMSC. The much larger portion is funded directly by the college and NMSC has nothing to do with it. It is just that the college has set one of the criteria for the package to be that the applicant has been named a National Merit (sometimes National Achievement/National Hispanic Scholar) Finalist who has named them First Choice.</p>
<p>Some colleges will offer the NM scholarship to all Finalists and for some it is competitive. From the NM information, in early March NMSC will start notifying sponsoring colleges of Finalists who have named them First Choice. College officials then choose the winners of these awards from among the Finalists names. Their timeline and what additional criteria they use is up to them.</p>
<p>Only the very top finalists (highest scores, highest GPAs, most accomplished) will be “A” winners. But any finalist who applies to schools which offer automatic NM packages can be a B winner. These are the really big scholarships-- worth much more than 8K. For OOS students these packages can be worth well over 100K over 4 years. Any finalist can sign up for these “B” scholarships, but most of them do not because they choose to go to other more selective/prestigious colleges. If your kid is a finalist and you are looking for big scholarships, the money is still out there if your kid is willing to attend a school that offers it.</p>
<p>Just a little clarification, the real big packages are for NMFs but are not sponsored by the corporation. For example my oldest son attended University of Minnesota. He was awarded the Gold Scholarship for being a national merit finalist. On top of that, he received the NMF award which was $1,000 or $2,000 per year depending on financial information (he received a total of $8,000 for this.)</p>
<p>My second son attends the University of Alabama and through their scholarship department, he received full tuition plus some other goodies (the award is different now than when he received it.) He was also the $2,500 NMF award winner. At that time Alabama offered an additional $1,000 per year as their NMF sponsored award so I didn’t know what to do as you can only accept one award (and $4,000 is better than $2,500). I contacted the school and at that time I was told to accept the award and UA would make up the difference. He accepted the $2,500 one time award and NMF corporation no longer works with him (unlike my other son who had to send something to them for the next 3 years.) UA was very generous and they made up the difference. They took $2,500 off of his bill the first semester, and has taken $500 off every semester since. This is not done by every school though, and their policy might have changed since.</p>
<p>Since my second son received the $2,500 award, he had more “flexibility” to use that award if he had gone to other schools. My oldest, who did not receive that award, would not have had any money from NMF Corporation if he didn’t go to a school that was involved in the program. Why S2 got the award rather than S1, I do not know. S1 and S2 were very comparable in their ACT Scores (35 vs. 36), had similar GPA and were both Vals for their schools. The only difference was that S2 DID score higher in the actual PSAT test.</p>
<p>It never makes sense to decline one of the NMSC $2500 awards, whether or not the school may have a larger one. You will not get a different award from NMSC if you decline one. This is clearly stated in the NMSC materials sent to semi-finalists. As mentioned above, most of the value of the large NMF packages come directly through the school and NMSC is not involved in that part and I am only talking about the smaller official part here.</p>
<p>It is up to the school whether they supplement the official part from NMSC to give a $2500 winner the same as their official college-sponsored winners receive. But they don’t want to have to replace the $2500 because that would mean money out of their own coffers replacing NMSC money. </p>
<p>@STEMFamily @atomom@kjcphmom: Thank you for replying my post and explain to me so detail! Thanks for your time!
I read from NMSC information package, and it says that “no student will receive more than one scholarship offer from NMSC”. </p>
<p>Our situation is: Both my husband and I do not work for any sponsored corporation, so my daughter can only possibly get A or B type scholarship. My daughter is applying colleges now. She will apply Harvard as early action and UChicago as regular action. UChicago is one of the COLLEGE SPONSORS, but Harvard is not.</p>
<p>We are filling application of National Merit Finalist now, and we need to select “first-choice college”. <I am not sure we should fill “Harvard” or “UChicago” as “first-choice college”.
If we fill “Harvard” as “first-choice college”, and college application result will end up with rejected by Harvard and accepted by UChicago, then we will lose the opportunity to get UChicago scholarship($2000X4=$8000).
So, should we fill “UChicago” as “first-choice college” now, and if my daughter will be accepted by Harvard, we will notice NMSC that we want to change “first-choice college” to be “Harvard”?</p>
<p>I heard that there are some colleges give lots money to NMFs (like tution waive), and my daughter probably will not apply those colleges, so we only consider the scholarship offered from NMSC.</p>
<p>@cherryli2015 Since Harvard is not an NMSC sponsor they will never even see a list of First Choice names so there is absolutely no point in putting them as First Choice until the deadline of May 31st, and then only if your D is attending and is awarded one of the $2500 scholarships. Meanwhile, you can put University of Chicago but even they will not see it until the NMSC starts sending names in early March. Once your D knows where she is going, if it is not UChicago, she can change the First Choice to any place else.</p>
<p>From OU’s website, they are one of the schools that give $$$ for national Merit,
BEGINNING IN MARCH OF YOUR SENIOR YEAR, THE NMSC WILL NOTIFY YOU OF ONE OF THREE POSSIBLE MERIT SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS.
You will only be offered one of these awards (either the National Merit-sponsored, Corporate-sponsored or College-sponsored
award), so you should accept the one award that is offered to you</p>
<p>You should check with UChicago to see what they say about accepting National Merit Scholarships. If UChicago is the only school being considered that offers $ for National Merit then that is the school to list as first choice</p>
<p>@STEMFamily @3scoutsmom Thank you so much!
So we will put UChicago as “first choice” now. In March 2015, we will know which award we will get. If we will get UChicago College-sponsored award, and by the end of March if we find out that my daughter will get accept by Harvard, then we just call NMSC or UChicago to let them know that we won’t go to UChicago, then they will cancel the wards, right? </p>
<p>@cherryli2015 NMSC will mail offers of the $2500 scholarships on March 26. NMSC does not start mailing offers of college-sponsored scholarships until May 1. You may or may not hear unofficially from the school itself before that time.</p>
<p>NMSC is trying to spread the scholarships to as many students as possible. That’s why most, may even be all, NMF that qualifies for a Corporate sponsored scholarship will not be in the A group. I have asked the question several years ago whether any Corporate scholarship eligible student ever got the one time $2500 NMSC scholarship instead. I have yet to receive a positive response back.</p>
<p>Many of the corporate sponsored scholarships are for 4 years and the total exceed $2500. There is really no reason to offer a $2500 one time scholarship to those NMFs instead.</p>
<p>I also believe they don’t tend to give the $2500 to students who are eligible for the corporate scholarship. An NMSC committee actually chooses those students on behalf of the corporations so they may be doing that in January in tandem with the $2500 winners. Not so with college-sponsored scholarships. Those are in the hands of college administrators and they don’t get names until starting in March.</p>
<p>Many colleges will work with you on that. For example, College A gives all NMFs that name College A as their first choice a half tuition scholarship. Only $2000 / yr. is the official NM scholarship from the school. So if your child end up getting the one time $2500 scholarship from NMSC, the school will still give your child a half tuition minus the $2500 in the first year. The best way is to check with the school about their policy. </p>