<p>Does anyone know how frequently NMSC sends colleges notification that they were named a student's first choice? If my student just set his choice yesterday, when will the school likely be notified. (We want to get confirmation of a (guaranteed by our understanding) scholarship before sending in a deposit.)</p>
<p>My DD listed her first choice a couple of weeks ago and the college notified us on Thursday that they received it.</p>
<p>Apparently they still do them in batches, and the schools can’t go online and see who has them set as their first choice. There was one batch on April 11th and the next one was on May 2nd. I personally think they should have one very late in April so that families can get 100% confirmation of a scholarship before accepting an offer of admission based on the assumption that they will get a scholarship. </p>
<p>Lesson learned: If you know where you’re going before April 11th (or whenever that April cutoff is in your year), definitely set your preference by then. I would say even if you know where you are probably going, set the preference with the possibility of changing it. We were waiting until we had a chance to do our re-visits the week of the 14th, so we missed the April cutoff, and thus the chosen school didn’t have our son’s first choice confirmation when he was ready to pull the trigger.</p>
<p>In our case, the school was able to call NMSC and they confirmed that my S had set them as his first choice. This even though when I called NMSC they told me that they would not give that information to the school, and that the school could only find out by waiting for the next batch. Even before they confirmed, though, they spoke to me on the phone and assured me that my S would be awarded the scholarship as soon as they got confirmation, so he was able to go ahead and pay the acceptance fee.</p>
<p>If you are planning on a college-sponsored award, make sure you are either listed as undecided or are sure of the first choice you have listed on May 1st because that is the day that NMSC starts mailing the award letters. Once a letter is mailed to you, you are then ineligible for any other college-sponsored award if you change your mind. </p>
<p>Regardless of the type of award (one time $2500, corporate-sponsored, or college-sponsored), everyone must have a first choice listed by May 31st.</p>
<p>Agreed, important advice @STEMFamily </p>
<p>I had thought we had this all figured out, and my DS stayed undecided until he actually decided, but that ended up being maybe not the right way to go (not in any major way, just in terms of being able to confirm things early). I think it might be better to put in a “most likely” decision by early April, and then change it before May 1 if needed. (Some schools also require a decision before a certain date, but <em>still</em> those schools’ awards are not sent out until May 1, so it’s safe to set them as a first choice if you’re not sure, and change it later.)</p>
<p>@matmomvt Exactly. I think this is one of the things making this so confusing. You have to satisfy both the NMSC and the individual school requirements and sometimes the school requirements aren’t easy to find on the website and the people you get on the phone don’t really know either.</p>