<p>Has anyone been notified that they are a semi-finalist?</p>
<p>If you have, can you please post your state and the score that qualified you for semi-finalist status?</p>
<p>How prestigious is the National Achievement scholar award?</p>
<p>will give you a full ride (tuition, housing, stipend) at UAB. [UAB</a> - The University of Alabama at Birmingham](<a href=“http://www.uab.edu%5DUAB”>http://www.uab.edu) strong school for sciences, premed, anything health related, urban campus, 11K undergrads, 26% AA. home of medical school</p>
<p><a href=“Error 404 | Not Found”>Error 404 | Not Found;
<p>UAB is a destination for academically talented students, and we love to reward your hard work. We recognize National Merit Finalists, National Achievement Finalists, and National Hispanic Scholars with the following scholarship, which is renewable for four years. The details:</p>
<p>Full tuition, required fees, and housing (up to 15 credit hours per semester) for a total of eight semesters (fall and spring)
A one-time $2,500 stipend to be used for experiential learning (Study Away, internships, co-ops, etc.)
Students receiving UAB merit-based scholarships are required to live on campus for their first year of enrollment. </p>
<p>Once you’ve been admitted to UAB, simply do the following to claim your scholarship:
National Merit Finalists: Name UAB your first choice with the National Merit Scholarship Corporation; the paperwork for this should be included with your finalist letter. They’ll then send us your name, and we will award your scholarship. Yes, it’s really that easy.</p>
<p>National Achievement Finalists and National Hispanic Recognition Program Scholars: Fax or mail us a copy of your Finalist letter and/or your Finalist certificate, and we’ll award your scholarship:
Coordinator of Undergraduate Scholarships
HUC 317
1530 3rd Avenue South
Birmingham, AL 35294
(205) 934-8941</p>
<p>I’m pretty certain my D did not learn of semifinalist status last year until after senior year began (i.e., after Labor Day). As for prestige–hard to say. My D viewed it as nice recognition but not particularly prestigious. That’s just her opinion though. I doubt it impacted her Harvard acceptance, as she was just a semifinalist at the time of her acceptance and semifinalist status is based solely on PSAT/SAT scores. (Obviously, the scores themselves did have an impact.) Regardless of the prestige factor, as a parent I was happy for the 2500 bucks, as we generally did not do well with respect to outside scholarships.</p>
<p>The main reason for this (late) post is to encourage semifinalists to pay close attention to application fee guidelines for each school, as some schools waive the fee for semifinalists. My D only applied to two schools, so fees weren’t much of a factor. However, her second school (U.Maryland) waived the fee but did not note it on the application. I happened to come across the waiver information when visiting their site, so we just didn’t pay the fee when my D applied. We were a bit worried she’d receive an “application incomplete” email, but she did not and was accepted. Good luck everyone.</p>
<p>Good advice. We had started applications, but decided to wait for rest to see if she will get application waivers.</p>
<p>UMD gives application waivers to National Achievement semi-finalists?</p>
<p>Maryland Fee Waiver</p>
<p>The University of Maryland grants fee waivers for National Merit, National Achievement, or National Hispanic finalists or semi-finalists and Maryland Distinguished Scholar finalists, semi-finalists, and honorable mention recipients. We also honor fee waivers granted by the College Board or American College Testing program. All other fee waiver requests are evaluated on a case-by-case basis</p>
<p>If you are applying to UMCP, it is important to apply by the priority deadline November 1st. It’s well known that most of their students are selected from the early pool of applications.</p>
<p>Exactly, Mrluggs–no way to know it unless you happened to come across the language to which 4CookieMonster refers. There is no mention of it on the actual application (at least there wasn’t last year). I just cited UMd as one example. There may be others. Might as well save your (or your parent’s) money where you can. </p>
<p>4CookieMonster–remember also that for UMd, applying by the priority deadline is necessary for Honors consideration, including the full-ride Banneker/Key scholarship (at least that was the case last year).</p>
<p>My daughter is half African American half East Indian. She identified as African American on the PSAT. She scored a 234. If they qualify for regular National Merit Semi-finalist, are they not eligible for National Achievement?</p>
<p>You can qualify for both - you could even qualify for National Hispanic as well, if you are both Black and Hispanic.</p>
<p>Howard University offers a fee waiver, and a full ride scholarship for National Achievement Scholars, if they still have money available (apply early, rather than later).</p>
<p>@TVenee. While you can qualify for both NMF and NA. You are not able to be monetarily rewarded for both. </p>
<p>If your child is a recepient of a company sponsored award through NMF sponsorship then you will need to compare what difference, if any there is with NA and go from there.</p>
<p>Otherwise both NMF and NA are one time award from the National Merit Corporation. The participating schools however, allocate a variety of scholarships. Congrats to your daughter on her wonderful score.</p>
<p>203 made NAS in Texas</p>
<p>Congrats @yofaith. Do you know if anyone at your school with a lower score qualified for NAS in Texas?</p>
<p>Sorry, only other score I know that qualified is 200 in Oklahoma</p>
<p>Has anyone heard score for New Jersey</p>
<p>@yofaith - Thanks. I know that 198 did NOT make it last year in Texas region so I was curious if the cutoff went down for 2013 as NMSF cutoff in Texas went down 3 points.</p>
<p>@bostonmom2–I don’t know if you’re checking the Natl Merit Scholarship board, but someone posted today that 196 qualified in TX.</p>
<p>@bcisaidso, thanks! Thanks a dropped consistent with NMSF for this year!</p>
<p>Hopefully we’ll start to hear from more students soon.</p>