<p>Okay, so I realize that this is a pretty petty dilemma, but I was wondering if anyone has advice...</p>
<p>I find myself faced with the need to send a National Merit notification to two different schools. Harvard is my first choice school; I'm just afraid that them receiving my notification will have a negligible effect. Would it be more worth it to send my letters to smaller LACs that I'm also pretty interested in attending, or better to send it to my "dream" schools, Harvard and Princeton/Yale? Does the admissions office honestly even care? Or do they get so many that they go straight to the recycling bin? </p>
<p>Thanks in advance for any input!</p>
<p>Don’t send it to Harvard, Princeton, Yale, or even any prestigious LACs like Swarthmore etc. because none even sponsor national merit scholarships. Send them to your probable safeties and indicate natiaonl merit semifinalist on your applications to Harvard and other elite schools.</p>
<p>Thanks, that’s good advice.</p>
<p>For National Merit Finalist/Semi-Finalist (which I’m not sure if you are - read below): Don’t even send it to your probable safeties yet. Look up your safety or target schools that give money to national merit semi-finalists or finalists. Look up which schools gives the most money and when the deadline for turning in the forms are.</p>
<p>Wait until near the deadlines to turn it in to one school. The point here is that you supposedly only get money for the school you indicate as your first choice. But, until college decisions, you won’t know which schools you’ll get into or which you’ll likely go to.</p>
<p>Some of your safety schools might offer you at least half-tuition for just being a finalist (ex/ USC for me). Now say your target/probable reach school offers you a few thousand (ex/ Harvey Mudd for me). And of course, your super reach schools (Harvard, other Ivies, Stanford, etc.) offer you no money at all.</p>
<p><a href=“1”>b</a>** So say you get into your reach schools, then its a moot point. You don’t need to send it anywhere as I assume you’ll attend one of the reach schools. <a href=“2”>b</a>** If you don’t get into your super reach schools or are waitlisted, then you are now faced with most likely the choice of going to a target/probable reach school with perhaps less generous money grants then a safety school. You choose now where to send in your national merit form.</p>
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<p>Out of curiosity, are you entering college in 2009 or 2010? Since if you’re entering for 2009… wouldn’t this be too late already? And if you’re entering in 2010, don’t you find out only at the start of your senior year? (well, that was the case for me) Or, did you take it as a sophomore? Or… are you talking about you got notified as someone in the top X%, but not yet notified as a finalist and this is simply to send to a school to ask for more information about the school? If it’s the latter (ie. it’s not your finalist notification) - which I think is the case for this time of the year - then it matters even less. In this case, just send it to any school you want as it has no “official” bearing. It’s value is even less than that of a finalist/semi-finalist standing and if you make semi-finalist/finalist, you’ll get another card later in the year which is the one that really “matters” (for scholarships).</p>
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<p>And to answer your question, any reach school don’t really care about national merit finalists/semi-finalists. Definitely include it in your application, but don’t expect it to do much in your favor. It’s only really useful for schools that offer you money if money is something that might influence your decision. And it’s nice to have if a school that you might like to go to just happens to give money for it anyways.</p>
<p>WAIT!!! I want to disagree with previous posters. You can change your first choice school after you hear from colleges (if you are named a semifinalist, finalist, and winner), so the point about money is moot. I assume you just learned of your national merit status recently, and you’re still a junior, and my advice will be given accordingly. Basically, at this point, all you are doing by sending in the letter to two schools is saying that they are your top two choices. Money is irrelevant until you become a national merit semi-finalist, at which point you have the opportunity to name your top choice school (here’s where you begin to consider not only your desire to express interest, but also financial considerations, and it is certainly not the final opportunity to use national merit to get money).
I had a similar dilemma last year at this time. Part of me wanted to send it to my top two choices, Harvard and Yale to gain any little advantage I could, and another part of me wanted to send it to Michigan, just to seal the deal. Instead, I sent it to Penn and Columbia, my 3-4 choices. Basically, I reasoned that H and Y don’t really give a **** that you are interested in them–they decide whether or not they are interested in you. Penn and Columbia (or whatever the equivalents are on your list), on the other hand, have the second tier Ivy inferiority complex. Basically, they care whether or not you are interest in them. So, I sent it to them. Later on I sent my “top choice” thing to Yale, to show consistency between that and my EA application. I thus had Yale thinking they were my first choice, P and C each thinking they were my second choice, and Harvard knowing that as the number one school in the country and every little boy and girl’s dream, they were my first choice.</p>
<p>Final result–none of this scheming probably made any difference, but things worked out. Into Penn, wait listed at Harvard, felt like I couldn’t have done anything more for Yale or Columbia (except apply ED to the latter, which I was never going to do). This plan relies on you being pretty sure you’ll be a semi finalist so you have the later opportunity to send in a first choice school (post your score and I might be able to tell you, I was safe with a 234), but even if you don’t get the shot, I think a step below Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford would be the best place to send these two. The only exception is if you need to lock up a safety school, in which case an expression of interest like this might actually make a difference.</p>
<p>Wow, guys, thanks so much for the input! </p>
<p>This is my situation: I’m a junior this year, and my PSAT score, unfortunately, is really, really, borderline-- a 212. The state in which I live, Colorado, had a cut-off of 213 last year, so I’m really hoping that I’ll squeak through this year. I know that all of this is pretty sketchy, since I may not even make it past commended status, but I just wanted to be sure that I’m doing the right thing. If I don’t make it past this step in the process due to my (relatively) low score, what schools should I send it to? </p>
<p>Benny, I like your advice about sending it to the “middle” schools, but I’m not sure if I’ll get to express interest in any schools beyond this stage due to my questionable score. What do you think?</p>
<p>What I was talking about that you can’t “change” is the official National Merit Finalist/Semi-Finalist notification card. According to the information with the card, once you send it in to a “first-choice” school, if you attempt to resend it to another school, they have no obligation to award you any money despite if they usually do. Hence my reasoning above completely makes sense.</p>
<p>Concerning if the OP is talking about just the “commended” or top X% thing, which was not clarified, then what I wrote later on about it not really mattering where it is sent to also makes sense.</p>
<p>Seriously, sending the initial “interest” one to schools like Columbia and Penn is not going to make that much of a difference. Sending the “top choice national merit semi-finalist/finalist” card to such schools perhaps will indicate interest, but unless you don’t care for money or are confident about your chances, it again isn’t much use. Schools like Harvard, Yale - and even Columbia or Penn - don’t really care about stuff like this. You did great on your PSAT’s, you’re interested - so what? So is virtually every single other applicant.</p>
<p>Anyways, my point of view is this: (1) For the initial commended/top X% interest cards, send it wherever you want. It won’t matter at all. (2) For the “top choice national merit semi-finalist/finalist” card, if you care about money, then read what I wrote in my original post and save it for later. If money is not at all an issue to you, then perhaps do as Benny B advises and send it to whatever school you really want to get into. But keep in mind that for top schools, it’s not really going to matter and you just wasted a chance for a lot of free money elsewhere at a safety, or a small amount of free money elsewhere at a target/easier reach. But then again, if none of your schools on your list have money, then just follow Benny B’s advice.</p>
<p>I like Benny B’s idea of manipulating interest with “middle” schools, but you should actually shoot a little lower if you’d like money to go with your interest. I don’t think Penn/Columbia give anything for National Merit–I’m not getting anything from Duke (similar caliber–2nd tier Ivy/almost HYPS), and I’m a NM Scholar. I know for a fact that WUSTL and Emory (10-20 in the rankings) match the National Merit scholarship each year though, and Finalists get $2000 a year at both those schools. This adds up to 10,000 and 8,000 over four years, not a huge amount but certainly better than what’d you’d get for NM at an Ivy or Ivy equivalent. As others have said before, your state school will pretty much give you full tuition/extra money for being NM–made UF a good safety option for me. Personally, I submitted my Commended to UF and Emory.</p>
<p>potentiality: heh, was typing up my above post while you posted.</p>
<p>I still stand by what I wrote, but to give you an idea of the timeline of things, you probably won’t find out if you made the semi-finalist cut until the start of your senior year (or at least this was the case for me as they sent the details to my school). If you make the semi-finalist cut, you’ll probably make the finalist cut too if you bother to do your application and get a similar or better SAT score.</p>
<p>Anyways, good luck with your national merit status and your college apps!</p>
<p>Last year I sent my national merit notification thingy to… Columbia and NYU? Either that or I didn’t send it at all.</p>
<p>You can change your college selection all the way up to when you accept offers of admission. Of course the relevance is for colleges that participate in the program. Otherwise, unless you receive one of the National awards, it does not matter. At this point for current juniors it is irrelevant. Both my sons did not name a college at this point. Believe me the colleges get a list from the college board and you will receive letters anyway.</p>
<p>Thanks, Jooter, and everyone else, those are all really good points. That helps a lot! I’ll keep my fingers crossed until next September…</p>
<p>Yeah, I guess this is my final take. If money is your issue, then if you break to the next round, consider Jooter’s advice and send it somewhere where it could help, though you won’t necessarily have to send it there initially to get the benefit. At this stage–and perhaps throughout depending on your financial situation and your list of schools–the only advantage is in terms of perceived interest. So, send it somewhere where you saying that the school is one of your top choices might mean something. If you’re one of the most qualified kids in the country (and I mean unreal applicant), then send it to Harvard. If Harvard and Yale are within your reach, but somewhere like Penn/Columbia/Duke is fairly realistic, send it to P/C/D to show that you might take them even if you got into H or Y. If you still need to lock up a safety, do that, unless it’s a huge state school whose process is so formulaic that they wouldn’t take that into account. If you want to go somewhere like WUSTL that is known for being really sensitive about students’ demonstrated interest, send it there. Remember, all you are doing now is saying that you are very interested in two schools, so figure out who would care.</p>
<p>This has been posted on other threads as well, but on your applications there will be a spot for academic awards and you can list NM commended or semi-finalist, whichever it is. You will find out in September and, if you are a semi-finalist, you’ll have about a week to fill out the application for finalist.</p>
<p>Thanks, Benny, that makes sense. I’m really not concerned about finances at this point, so my aim through all of this is really just to increase my chances of getting accepted by demonstrating interest.</p>
<p>potential,</p>
<p>I’m in Colorado, too. I got a 219 as a sophomore (I took snack breaks…) and a 213 as a Junior (with a bit of a hangover). I didn’t take this seriously at all, and I barely squeaked by with that 213. Did you make it with a 212? It seems like the other 15 semis as my school were 224+. </p>
<p>Personally, I’m sending mine to a mid range school that cares about national merit and courts NMS. I’d be happy going there, and it’s really prestigious, and I’m likely to get in as I have family teaching there. I thought that was a good medium. I listed NMS on my apps and initially put undecided on my NMS app.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Please call NM and ask them the exact questions you have. There are many factors involved in NM. Sponsored schools, corporate sponsors etc… So call them to get the exact answers to your questions.</p>