<p>My brother is a National Merit semifinalist, and has been receiving letters from all sorts of different schools telling him they'll offer him scholarships based on if he's a finalist or not. The one requirement is that he lists their school as his first choice to attend.</p>
<p>My question is...can he apply to several of these schools without naming them as his first choice (cause he hasn't made up his mind) and then make that decision after he gets their responses, or does he have to decide his "first choice" before he even applies?</p>
<p>There are several different schools we're thinking about, including Alabama and Oklahoma, but I just didn't know if you could apply to all of these schools and still qualify for their National Merit scholarships without specifying which one was your first choice.</p>
<p>He can apply to as many colleges as he wants. Be very careful, however, to check deadlines. Some colleges want to be named "first choice" by a certain date, which may be before he finds out decisions from other colleges.</p>
<p>thanks, that's what I needed to know. We'll have to pay close attention to that.</p>
<p>You can put your first choice as "undecided" and then name your true first choice sometime in April next year. You can also name a school as first choice now and then change to another school, usually in April or earlier, before the NMF scholarship is announced. You can apply to all the schools that offer NMF scholarship and then decide the first choice after acceptance. But do follow fireflyscout's advice to make sure to check deadlines. The deadlines are usually in April or May but some school might want you to name them your first choice in late March. However, all schools' deadline shall be after their notification of acceptance to the majority of students and thus give you time to make your decision.</p>
<p>You can also change your mind about your "first choice." Usually all you have to do is contact NM Corporation and/or fax them a signed statement that you have changed your "first choice". We did that and followed up with a phone call to make sure fax had been received and processed.</p>
<p>S1 marked his card as undecided last year (before the deadline) and NMC sent him a nastygram saying he needed to list a school, but that he could still change it until the April (?) deadline. I don't know if this is a change in policy. He went ahead and listed his first choice school, which sponsored NMF awards, but he got a NMC $2500 award instead. (The first choice school's deal was better.)</p>
<p>S also got some of those full scholarship NMF offers AFTER April 1st -- presumably they were hoping to catch a few kids who found out their FA wasn't what they hoped and were scrambling for a more affordable deal. UT/Dallas and Oklahoma come immediately to mind among the ones who sent S stuff.</p>