<p>College sponsor merit scholarships notification letters were sent out on Mar 27th 2014 from NMF (I called today). Has anyone received theirs?</p>
<p>Do you mean corporate? NMSC has this to say about the timeline of college sponsored awards:</p>
<p>“May 1, 2014: NMSC will begin mailing college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offers.”</p>
<p>In fact, read pages 3-4 of the PDF at <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/Merit_R&I_Leaflet.pdf</a> to see all the timeline info for college sponsored awards and pay attention to the college choice “NOTE” at the bottom of page 3. It seems many overlook that although 31 May is the deadline for reporting a college choice, one could miss one totally if they change their choice after having received one. </p>
<p>We received our letter for $2500 scholarship yesterday.</p>
<p>@MsMommy - Okay, but NOT a college sponsored award … you mean the NMSC direct award of $2500 … right? There is another thread for that. The OP seems to be asking about college sponsored awards. I think only the NMSC-direct or corporate sponsored awards are currently in the notification stages. College sponsored notifications begin 1 May. Apples - oranges - bananas, but only can have one.</p>
<p>So do you have to wait until May to find out if you won a scholarship? Who do they choose for direct scholarships vs. college scholarships? I am confused. And I have read the the information many times. </p>
<p>cindyyde…Unless a notification letter is lost in the mail somewhere, the $2500 one-time scholarship winners should’ve all received their notifications by now. You can also check online using the login information you used to create your account during the NMSF to NMF application process to see if you were awarded a one-time.</p>
<p>If you were not awarded a one-time and you have named a first-choice school that offers an official NM scholarship (either as a stand-alone award or as part of a larger package including an “unofficial” component) you will receive notification of the college-sponsored award in the near future and it will carry NM Scholar status.</p>
<p>No one knows for sure what criteria NMSC uses to choose the one-time $2500 recipients. If you look at the thread regarding stats for this year’s winners, many of them do have very high PSAT and SAT scores but that’s apparently not the only criteria. NMSC says they do not look to see if a SF has named a first-choice school before considering them for a one-time award, so who knows?</p>
<p>Our D1 was a NMF (Class of '11) with a 235 PSAT, 2400 SAT and had UMinn named as her first-choice school from the time she sent in her SF package. She was not awarded a one-time, but she was wanting the college-sponsored award ($1K/year) for the additional $1500 over 4 years. Not sure if UMinn would’ve supplemented the one-time award had she been selected, but we’re glad she didn’t have to worry about it.</p>
<p>Thank you so much Woverine86!</p>
<p>@Wolverine86
Did UMinn offer your D near fill tuition scholarship too? It seems they love NMF and offer those top scholarships to them and the amount is way more than the NMSC one anyway.</p>
<p>billcsho…Yes, they did. They’ve changed the amounts of some of the scholarships she received since '11, but her package included $11K/yr from NM ($10K “unofficial” and $1K “official”), a Presidential, a Bentson, and the OOS tuition difference waiver. It was a near full-ride, and they upped her Bentson by $2500 this year to pretty much make it a full-ride. </p>
<p>The number of NMFs at UMinn increased quite a bit over the last couple years since it’s one of the few schools in the Big 10 that offers any “unofficial” money to NMFs (Nebraska might?). I know the additional scholarship money above the $11K NMF has become more competitive, but that seems to be the trend with many of the schools that offer bigger unofficial scholarships. The popularity of those schools with NMFs tends to spike and the schools sometime have to budget a little more tightly to continue attracting high-stat non-NM kids as well.</p>
<p>@cindyyde - So if at this point you have not received any NMSC-direct or corporate-sponsored scholarship notifications, you are still awaiting a college-sponsored notification … correct?</p>
<p>If so, then make certain you know which colleges of those to which you applied offer college-sponsored awards to finalists through National Merit. You can research this any number of ways, but by all means call the school and ask directly if they will offer you a college-sponsored NM award if you name them first choice. Then, from among this subset of schools (i.e., you are accepted AND they will offer you a college sponsored award), decide which one you would most want to attend. </p>
<p>1) If you’ve made a decision in this regard, then go to the NMSC portal and name that school your first choice. Beginning 1 May, NMSC will begin dispensing notification of awards. BUT, realize if you change your mind after 1 May AND you’ve been granted an award by a school, you will not only forfeit their award, but also are ineligible to receive further offers!</p>
<p>2) If you’ve NOT yet made a decision in this regard, then leave your school choice as “undecided” until you have made a decision, … BUT realize that if you stay “undecided” all the way to the end of May, you will have lost any opportunity whatsoever when May expires.</p>
<p>My recommendation is that given lots of time (it’s 4 weeks to 1 May!), make the decision in April and list the school as you first choice before 1 May. That way you’ll be in the first wave for consideration. In any case, 1 May is the deadline for many/most schools to confirm various decisions in other regards.</p>
<p>Long, but hope this is clear. </p>
<p>If you have designated a first choice school, some of the schools have already sent out notifications for their “unofficial” (usually the larger part of the scholarship–in S’s case, near full ride) school-sponsored awards. (S already received notification of award from his school, and returned signed acceptance.) The additional “official” school-sponsored award will come in a few weeks (another 3K, over 4 years–if he gets what older son got).</p>
<p>@atomom - Sure, but the OP is asking specifically about official NMSC college sponsored scholarships (as evidenced by having “called NMF” to ask) and was confused regarding the differences between the three NMSC awards and timelines for notification of having received one.</p>
<p>Confusion seems to reign regarding some of the facts, so on this thread and others I have been careful to disambiguate the actual NMSC awards (there are 3 types and they all go through NMSC - you may only receive AND accept one offer) from the unrelated individual-university-direct-offered-scholarships that some schools use to attract NMF’s (i.e., the “unofficial” awards you reference). And yes, not encumbered in any way by NMSC, such schools can send out said offers whenever they want and regardless of whether one has listed the school as first choice. My experience (well, from among 3 such schools) is that they all just say that to receive the award, first choice of that school must eventually be recorded with NMSC by the school’s published deadline, usually 1 May.</p>
<p>Congrats to your son, and congrats to you for receiving such an award twice!</p>
<p>??? </p>