<p>NO, I called at the time we received the winner letter from nat’l merit foolishly assuming that to be the case and was told no.
In addition not only is it not a choice, you are not guaranteed any Nat’l Merit money from Rice no matter what your status is.</p>
<p>Can you clarify, Ricefan? What is the “no” in response to?</p>
<p>My daughter was a Natl Merit winner.
However on Rice financial aid site they claim that semi-finalists will receive 1000/yr for 4 years.
We foolishly assumed that as a winner she would “Merit” some award as well. It was then we were told no one is guaranteed an award regardless of your National Merit designation.</p>
<p>So your dau sent the postcard in to NM and told them Rice was her first choice? And she got it in before the deadline? Did she get money from NM directly?</p>
<p>The “NO” means no option to swap the National Merit Winner award which is a $2500 one time award from the National Merit people (not rice) for a Rice Merit award of 1000/yr for 4 years.</p>
<p>So she was awarded a one time scholarship from NM? When my ds got it, he got the Rice NM scholarship, not the NM corporate, but it was $750/yr, so only $500 more than what NM paid in ther onetime award. Iam not sure how it is decided if the award is school based or NM based, but as antarius said, its one or the other, not either or.</p>
<p>So your dau sent the postcard in to NM and told them Rice was her first choice? And she got it in before the deadline? Did she get money from NM directly?</p>
<p>Yes from day 1, when she took the test she was listing Rice as first choice. We had visited the prior summer and she was certain that this was her choice.
She applied and was accepted ED.
Yes the $2500 was directly from NM. A winner is only allowed one award but the NM people told me that official sponsors such as rice, will find another way to give you that money. That was good for a laugh, which they did at me when I very respectfully tried to have that discussion with them.</p>
<p>There may be other opprtunities. My s was awarded , to our complete surprise, some departmental merit scholarship money his soph and junior years, and then was awarded another departmental scholarship his senior year. So stay tuned, you might be pleasantly surprised.</p>
<p>Agree with jym626. I got additional merit scholarships when I was attending. One example was a couple of thousand as an award for “outstanding contribution to theatre”. </p>
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<p>I am not sure why NM said that. That seems to be the real issue. It looks like there was just a mess in communication, which sucks.</p>
<p>@RiceFan, I’m sorry for your frustrations. You sound like you feel you were misled, and that’s never a good feeling. I have two questions:</p>
<p>Is your daughter happy at Rice, and do you feel she is receiving a superior education?</p>
<p>How would you have done things differently with regard to her “first choice” NM selection?</p>
<p>In fairness to Ricefan, as much as I love LOVE LOVE Rice, their admissions, FA and Student Accounts staff could use a little PR training (if they are still the way they were when anxiousmom and I had our experiences several years back. There is a right way and a not-so-right way to present information that is more diplomatic than it sometimes seemed to be presented. FWIW.</p>
<p>The “mess” in communication came from Rice when they flat out told us about the award for even semifinalists, with no ifs, ands or buts. Rice is a Nat’l Merit sponsor and gets status credit for that. The Nat’l Merit people, who I spoke to at length assured me I must have spoken to the wrong person because as a sponsor school they will surely give you something.
So you are right in that the two stories did not match up but I would not be so sure the mistake was on the part of the NM folks.
In fact, having told us, verbally to be sure, that the award was given to semifinalists it was a clear deception as even that is not true.
That Rice reps told me they “get a lot of calls about this” further tells me we were not the only folks deceived.
Recruiting at these schools has turned into a sales position. As you look at reviews of schools they always list things such as “how many applied” “how many were NM winners” and so forth. Rice is attempting to “up” it’s stature so these details matter.
I do not for a second find this whole process less than a deliberately deceptive one.
We are not half wits. Had we been told anything other than a definitive on this, by more than one Rice person, we would not have a complaint. In addition given the tuition/fees and so on the award for this is relatively small.
However we visited as a family, we all heard the same thing, there is not mistaking the deception.
I debated sending a complaint letter to Nat’l Merit but decided it was not worth the trouble. As a sponsor school there are apparently expectations on this but it was time to move on.</p>
<p>“Is your daughter happy at Rice, and do you feel she is receiving a superior education?
How would you have done things differently with regard to her “first choice” NM selection?”
My daughter is ecstatic at Rice. However I expect she would have been accepted to other equally rated schools as well, some of which continually sent us letters offering small to full scholarship based on her winner status.
As we don’t qualify for any financial aid that will still amount to over $200,000 over four years plus grad school. For that she could have been ecstatic elsewhere.</p>
<p>Would the $1,500 difference between what NM is giving her and what Rice would have given her have made a difference in your dau’s choice of schools?</p>
<p>Probably not, but the process has deeply soured us on Rice. We did not realize that a school would do such a thing but have taken the time to learn a great deal about recruiting since then.
We were perfectly willing to foot the bill for this school if it was a good fit. However as we are paying the full bill for her we would have been reluctant to give that to a school that we feel had deceived us. The timing of all of this was such that it was too late to go back and get a do-over on school choice. Nat’l Merit winners are announced long after apps are in. When she was accepted early decision we were required to pull back all other applications. We did not realize the problem until too late.
It reflects on the character of the whole school- even if it is only one department, and others who think they are getting this money should be aware.
Having said that it is the deception, not the $1500 that we are upset about.
After the years of hard work and achievement to walk away with ZERO just was not fair.</p>
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<p>RiceFan - You should write a letter. While it may not assist you, it will hopefully help clear up communications and ensure that Rice meets expectations and awards NM SF/F/W what they are anticipating/deserve in the future.</p>
<p>Unless someone says something, the problem will continue.</p>
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<p>Admissions too.</p>
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You, agreed antarius. I gave admissions top billing :)</p>
<p>Hmmm… It looks like Rice will not stack a National Merit Scholarship on top of a National Merit Scholarship. The order of the process is that NM Corp chooses the students to give the one-time $2500 scholarship to FIRST; after that, Rice offers scholarships to the remaining NM finalist students. NMS corp is correct in that SOME colleges do “make up the difference” financially for students who get the one-time award. I would have your daughter send a POLITE letter to Rice financial aid director quoting the Rice website which shows the $1000 per year amount, and ask if Rice will make up the difference between the one-time $2500 amount and the $1000 per year award amount.<br>
RiceFan - I’m glad your daughter is happy at Rice!</p>
<p>Nat’l Merit requires you return a signed letter accepting the award in order to allow you to accept the largest award possible. For example we received letters offering full scholarships to her as a winner of Nat’l Merit. We could choose if options were avail. As she was accepted ED to rice that ship had sailed.
Therefore Rice clearly had a choice. If you read my prior posts you will discover that polite contact with Rice gets us nowhere.
In addition a non-scientific survey of fellow unhappy students tells us that for the most part these awards are used to fill financial aid packages. We have not found a single merit-only award student. I am sure rare exceptions exist.
This appeared to be a misleading recruiting tool. Most similarly rated schools will flat out let you know that they only offer need based aid. Rice, is in the process of trying to increase its profile and recognition. One of the things that drew us to rice in the first place was that they were among the few to offer merit awards.
I don’t think we were unique. Families who are ineligible for need based aid will certainly pay attention to this. Absent this I don’t think we would have had rice on our radar.
Yes she is happy at rice but that does not alter the deceptive recruiting practice. </p>
<p>As I said earlier it is about deception and character. They would have received more from us in donations than this award was worth. As it is we will donate absolutely nothing to the school.
It was a loss and a mistake all around.</p>
<p>I actually know of MANY merit-only award students at Rice, several who were ED admits. One of the problems hunting merit aid at Rice is that virtually all the students at Rice are merit worthy, and being a National Merit scholar is not that rare or special. (And, quite frankly, is based on a multiple-choice test taken junior year. I can see why a lot of colleges are no longer taken NMF status into account any more when awarding merit aid.) Applying Early Decision is binding - and individuals who need to hunt merit aid should not apply that way. I am not condoning rudeness from any Rice department, and the info on the website does say that NMF’s at Rice will receive $1000 per year: they should add a note to say the winners of NM corp sponsored $2500 awards are not eligible for the Rice NM award, if that is the case. (And I still think that a letter from your daughter pointing that out might make that case effectively enough to redress the situation.)
I hope your daughter can find some other ways to gain monetary value from her Rice experience. My daughter was able to make money at Rice by working a non-work-study job that paid well with flexible hours, was given a $1000 stipend to be a Humanities fellow, was able to travel abroad to Nicaragua with a Rice student organization for just the cost of food, received a $500 departmental award at graduation, and received a Rice travel scholarship that paid for a YEAR of living-frugally- and studying abroad after she graduated.</p>