@kaibab3 The letters take various amounts of time to arrive depending on your location. I would not say that if you haven’t received a letter by today that you are definitely NMF. Most of us hold our breath until the official letter (either from the principal or the one direct to our student) is received in February. However, if your kid hasn’t received one next week at this time, he/she is probably NMF.
I found it. “The average cutoff for all states was 218”.
High PSAT score guarantees semifinalist status but advancing to finalist then to a scholar status, specially to get an scholarship from the foundation itself requires a whole lot more than high PSAT/SAT combo. It sure is the biggest factor but there are many more.
If an administrative mistake was made then appeal should resolve OP’s issue, otherwise it won’t help.
@Vamom72 - A thread you may want to read.
This whole thread just points out the weirdness of the whole National Merit concept. Why is there such a big process and high stakes around a practice SAT? Why not make it about the real SAT instead? Why would schools covet anyone who does well on a practice test when the real test results and all kinds of other attributes are readily available? Even though my son may benefit from this “honor”, it doesn’t seem like it will persist much into the future.
@FLWahoo “It doesn’t seem like it will persist much into the future.”
Funny! It doesn’t seem like much, does it? However, I’ve run into so many people in my short life so far (40+ years) who didn’t make NMSF or who had a sibling/friend make it who remember & remark on how impressive it is. I’ve seen an employment decision made on the basis of a candidate listing that they were a NMF on their resume. (I thought that the candidate still listing it on his resume showed how poor of a fit he was for that particular job.)
A president of a College interrupted a meeting with his Athletic Director to greet my NMSF daughter recently. He commented to her that his two sisters were both National Merit Finalists but that he hadn’t achieved that honor.
It is surprising how much prestige there is for an award that is given to 15,000-16,000 kids per year. But those who did NOT get it have more awe of it than those who did achieve it. Or so it seems to me.
NM is a convoluted and weird program that offers a relatively narrow benefit, IMO. My son made NMF 3 years ago and it initially seemed a great honor. In the end it didn’t result in any tangible benefit for us, though I acknowledge it may do so for some.
First of all the awards actually given by NM are relatively paltry ($2500 one time) and somewhat rare (2500 kids total.)
The real benefit comes from certain colleges which award significant money to NMFs, often $15000-$25000/yr. That’s really great. However, most of those colleges do offer significant merit scholarships, and chances are that anyone scoring well on the PSAT will also do well on the real tests and may be offered such merit money anyway. But then there’s also a catch: you only get the money from college A if you designated it as “first choice” by a certain date. And, inexplicably, sometimes that date falls before the admissions notification date !?!?! So then it becomes a lottery game.
I surmise that most of those kids who ace the PSAT will also do very well on the real SAT or ACT and may submit apps to the tippy-top colleges. But note: Those tippy-tops do not offer NMFs anything. None of the Ivies do, and I don’t think any of the USNWR top 30 offer significant (>$2000) NMF money. The OP has a child who got phenomenal scores and might (should?) aim for such colleges. My NMFchild did pretty well too (ACT 35) and ultimately enrolled at Carnegie-Mellon (wonderful choice and experience) but which offers NMFs nothing.
So who really benefits from the NM program? Students whose ‘best’ acceptance is not a tippy-top and whose #1 choice offers a guaranteed amount of merit to NMFs and who wouldn’t have gotten that amount anyway. Maybe there are a significant number of these…I really don’t know.
My exploration of this is 3 yrs old and maybe things have changed…happy to be corrected.
@pickpocket - I agree, mostly. However, for my DS, being named NMF can mean a lot of money, at some top schools. From his application list:
Vanderbilt (ranked #14) gives NMF $5000/year
Univ of Florida (ranked #35) - NMF receive full COA scholarships through the state’s Benacquisto program
FSU (ranked #70) - same as Univ of Florida
Clemson (ranked #66) - $5500 on top of whatever other merit scholarship is offered
Auburn - $4000 (or more, based on need) on top of the Presidential Scholarship ($72000) that he was already offered.
Then there are several schools for which there would be no benefit, as you said. My point is that there’s at least one top 20 (haven’t checked them all) that offers money and several that offer money on top of other scholarships. For us, though, living in Florida, where UF is likely his first choice, NMF is HUGE! (BTW, in case anyone didn’t know, the Benacquisto scholarship was extended to include OOS students beginning last year.)
I posted in response without thinking about which thread it was…Vamom72, I hope that your appeal is successful. We are anxiously hoping that we don’t end up in the same boat, since DS has a semester C from 9th grade. It stinks that one year that isn’t even in high school some places can knock out someone with your child’s other qualifications.
D, who was National Merit Scholar in 2017, is a Chancellor’s scholar at Vandy. She only got $2000 per year on NM., as she also got the big scholarship.
I also agree with @“aunt bea” , kids at NMSF mostly have 4.0 and made National AP scholar by their junior year, at least in our school (we are PA Publlic school with total around 20 AP classes available). How are they going to decide which 15,000 move forward? GPA seems to be an easy and cut and dry criteria. Does OP daughter have any Bs since freshman? That can all part of consideration. I think they care about PSAT score, instead of SAT score in determining NMF and NMS. And they prefer test in single sitting instead of superscore.
Best of luck with your appeal!
Thank you for the update and corrections @kdnmom !
May I know the status of your appeal? How did it go?
I am also rooting for you and am hopeful the appeal worked. I find it very disheartening when kids who are fabulous students and have grown academically are rejected. Every school/ scholarship says to push hard and rigor counts, but it doesn’t seem to be credited if the grade is not perfect. I know of countless kids who have never pushed themselves at all and took the easy path who are having success in admissions and scholarships, whereas kids who took risks and challenged themselves may have had a small misstep and then recovered, but that permanent blemish hurts them. I am not sure how “holistic” that is? I would certainly think the appealing candidate would be the student who stepped out of their comfort zone and maybe stumbled at first (like your D’s C in 9th grade), but then adapted and grew and finished well. That says something about her character, and resilience. Whatever happens with this situation, those traits will serve her well in life. Best of luck to you and your daughter.
@Carolinasun yes, my daughter had one B in one semester of AP Calc BC junior year. She probably would have had an A if she had taken Calc AB but felt she wanted to push through the most rigorous path we had which culminates with Multivariable Calc and Linear Algebra senior year. I can’t help but think that B lead to her deferral from MIT.
@BertieMom - that is frustrating. I am actually surprised MIT deferred her. I remember reading specifically that MIT wants to see that a student has actually tried something hard and struggled and recovered because then they know they will persevere once at MIT. They worry more about kids who have never run into any challenge because what will happen when they do? I hope she can advocate for herself and explain the situation. As a parent of a child with a similar situation (although he didn’t even get deferred from his ED school) - my son’s course load sounds very similar, I am rooting for those types of kids because I know they have really worked hard and pushed themselves. I just hope the adcoms give that situation strong consideration. Good luck!
This is to go from semi-finalist to finalist or from finalist to scholar? It is odd that she didn’t make finalist as I’ve been told all who get all the application package in on time make finalist. Much of that does come from the HS, so maybe a conversation there is in order. Again, your daughter should do that not you. Also, ACT could be zero as far as College Board is concerned. PSAT then SAT are all the consider.
" Also, ACT could be zero as far as College Board is concerned. PSAT then SAT are all the consider."
That’s true but it will change next year when ACT can be used for confirming score. Also, while the vast majority of NMSF’s move on to finalist stage (15,000 out of 16,000), and most of the 1,000 or so who don’t probably didn’t bother to fill out an application, national merit does look at your transcript and some applicants get dinged every year for low grades.
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@BertieMom As a fellow parent of a deferred applicant to MIT, please don’t live with the worry that one semester B was the reason your daughter was deferred. MIT had 9,600 EA applicants and only 707 acceptances, so the fact she was deferred rather than rejected (as 2,483 others were) means that they see her as qualified. I’m reading stories on the MIT page of deferrals for kids with perfect GPAs, scores, Olympiad medals, published research, etc.–it’s just a brutal year for everyone. MIT’s website even says that deferred EA applicants will be considered for RD “without predjudice”. While an early acceptance would have been a relief, the process isn’t over yet.
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I don’t think any of the USNWR top 30 offer significant (>$2000) NMF money
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One exception I know of is USC (#22 on USNWR 2019 list), which offers 1/2 tuition Presidential scholarships (~$27K/year) to accepted NMF’s that select USC by the required date. This is in addition to a small ($1K/year) school-sponsored NM scholarship, provided the student did not receive a NMSC or corporate sponsored NM award.