OP what grade is your son? You say that he has made NMF so that would make him a senior already, if this is the case you are a little late to the party.
Good catch @3scoutsmom
The OP wrote:
To the OP…are you guessing he will make NMF based on his PSAT score?
If your son is a senior, I don’t know of any full rides that would be available for a fall start. Assuming your son is a junior:
Wichita State has a full ride for NMF (you may have to pay textbooks) and is outstanding for Aerospace Engineering: http://webs.wichita.edu/?u=merit_scholarships&p=/national_merit/
University of New Mexico has a full ride for NMF and also a competitive full ride for high-stats kids: http://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html. There are many outstanding math and stats professors, and I hear the engineering department is fairly good. Of course, UNM is southwestern.
Yes, we are guessing on NMF He is a junior but didn’t miss any questions on the PSAT/NMSQ.
Explore Honors Colleges and their full merit money and the majors they are strong in. Our kid (NMF) could also have gotten free (money wise) college education but we turned down free college for full pay, a reverse of what many do. Lol If your kid has great test scores and stats, you might get scholarships from top 50 colleges also.
Lots of good advice here. Be aware that your son also needs excellent grades to get the best offers. Test scores alone won’t be enough for a full ride at many places.
OP, just to add on, NMF and a 1570 SAT by themselves are not going to have schools falling all over themselves for your student. Yes, NMF does open doors for some fantastic scholarships at good schools. But the more elite schools will not throw money at your son just because of his test scores, and depending on the rest of his application he may not even be admitted. Georgia Tech and UVA and UIUC and UC Berkeley are all turning away students with your son’s test scores, or if admitted they aren’t getting merit scholarships. Not to mention places like Caltech where the entire top 25% of the incoming class had a perfect 1600 and your son’s 1570 is just average.
This is not to disparage your son’s fantastic test scores. It is just to caution you not to expect large merit scholarships everywhere merely on the basis of test scores. It is best not to think of your son as being able to sit back and “entertain all offers”; instead, you and he need to carefully research the NMF scholarship packages and the merit scholarships at other colleges that do not participate directly in NMF. He should be able to find an admission and financial safety that he likes, and then he can work hard on his applications to the competetive merit scholarships at reach schools.
My own son is NMF, has a 1560 SAT, unweighted 4.0, National AP scholar, fifth out of ~750 students in his class at the time applications were due (he’s since gone up to third but likely too late for any impact) and a variety of interesting ECs. He lacks both depth and demonstrated leadership in his ECs though (no high-level EC awards, different activities each year of high school, no named leadership positions), and he is unhooked (affluent suburban white male with two college-educated parents), so he’s just one of a sea of relatively interchangeable high-stats applicants. He knew he would be facing the same low admission odds as thousands of other unhooked high-stats kids, many of whom had better ECs and leadership. A review of Naviance was a sobering reality check for reach schools. In the end he loved his safety, UT Dallas, so much that he decided he didn’t even want to apply anywhere else. But we only found UT Dallas, which offers an automatic nearly full ride for NMF, through research. UT Dallas didn’t really pursue my son at all; if not for my research here on CC I never would have even thought about sending him to UTD. So there are wonderful opportunities out there for your son but you’ve got to find them.