<p>Does anyone know if leaving "undecided" as your college choice gives you a better chance at a $2500 award from the actual National Merit Corporation? My top 5 choices are all private colleges that offer no merit aid, and my safety is University of Wisconsin-Madison, which offers $750-$2000. I need to send in the preference card, like, tomorrow if I want to be considered for the UW-Madison award. Any thoughts?</p>
<p>I have not seen anything that indicates that intended major is a consideration. </p>
<p>What preference card? Is it something specific to UW-Madison?</p>
<p>no it is the postcard from the actual people at NM. You only use it if you marked undecided on your sf application. and intended major has nothing to do with this, i'm asking about intended school. please help anyone??</p>
<p>If UW has a deadline for indicating it as your first choice, go ahead and mail in the card with UW as your first choice. I don't think leaving it as undecided will make any difference as to who gets the NM Scholarships. You can change your first choice school once before the final deadline at the end of April if you decide you want another school. So I don't think you lose anything by putting down UW, especially if all your other schools don't offer anything to NM finalists.</p>
<p>I don't think leaving it "undecided" will help you, nor will choosing a school hurt. My D put down a school as first choice that gave excellent merit aid, and still received the NMS corp scholarship.</p>
<p>so... I don't understand...They give out the NMS corp scholarships first, don't they? So what if you're counting on a great school sponsored scholarship?</p>
<p>You can get both. Schools have individual policies on how they handle the merit money from the corporation. Some add it on to their own scholarship, and I guess some might reduce it by that amount. In either case, NMS won't use your college choice in their decision whether to give you their scholarship.</p>
<p>Oh I see. That's good, then.</p>