Help! My only child received her NHRP Congratulations letter today. So happy for her but now she is a semifinalist? Does anyone know what is considered to progress to be a finalist? The College Board has our kids scores, so what else is being considered? Wouldn’t they already know if it is purely their composite score they are using?
I have a hispanic foster son and I’ve never heard of this program. He won a scholarship from the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, but I’ve not hear of this one. He is a college sophomore, won Horatio Alger and Gates Millennium as well.
From College Board::
Recognition
If you’re a finalist, you’ll get a certificate in the mail in September of senior year. You’ll have plenty of time to list it on your college applications.
Your school will also be notified.
Recognized students are from the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands, as well as other students attending schools abroad. Approximately 200 of the top-scoring PAA™ students from Puerto Rico are also included.
@wilev1122 If you read the letter it should direct you to a website to fill out an application. As far as I can tell (I finished the application a couple days ago even though it is due in June 
) they just consider GPA, because that’s all that they asked for other than the basic address and stuff. I guess it might be that anyone who turns in the application and has a somewhat decent GPA gets the recognition?
As I recall, my daughter’s high school counselor had to sign off on the application. I remember taking her birth certificate and my birth certificate (which showed that my mother is from Honduras) to prove my daughter’s eligibility. But, I can’t remember if that was required. PS: Because of this, she qualified for the a full tuition scholarship at Fordham University in NYC!
The application didn’t even ask where my parents were from, just asked on the counselor part if I was Hispanic, and if the counselor didn’t know, then a parent had to to fill out a bit more.
HI, you asked about the NHRP letter that your child received. The only thing they need to do at this point is go to the link provided in the letter, input their invitation number in order to ‘register’ - then just two more things. There is a form you print out and give to your Guidance Counselor. They must verify that (1) your child is at least 25% Hispanic, and that (2) your child has an unweighted GPA of 3.5 or higher. That’s it! Then you wait until September when they are officially notified that they are a NHRP Scholar.
I seem to recall phoning the number listed at College Board over the summer before receiving the official notification, to confirm we were going to make the cut-off for our state.
Then anxiously waiting for schools to post their updated scholarship information around August 1st prior to application season opening.
We needed to find big merit money in order for college to be affordable. We had the following schools penciled in, on our long list, for big merit money: U of Arizona, Arizona State, U of Nebraska Lincoln, U of Alabama (for ACT score), Fordham, and U of Kentucky in Lexington.
Our kid is currently at UKy on the Patterson Scholarship. Full tuition plus a stipend for room and board.
http://www.uky.edu/financialaid/scholarship-incoming-freshmen
@Midwest67 we have U KY on list as National Merit Finalist for comp. science… if you have feedback on that major, or the campus life–please share
@2sunny PM’d you.