National Merit Questions

Paying for College
1

I have a question regarding the National Merit process. I know they mentioned some students would be commended, and some moves onto “semi-finalist”, and some of the semi-finalists go onto become finalists. My school indicated that being finalists are the end of the National Merit process.

But I read that one one web site that some of the finalists are selected to be “National Merit Scholars”. So that seems to suggest the “finalists” are indeed finalists of something right? So if you become a finalist is there another test, another set of screening to go through to become designated as NM scholars?

Or may be being awarded a scholarship is that?

Speaking of scholarship…I read the various types of NM scholarships. The $2500 ones, the corporate sponsored ones and the college sponsored ones. I am looking at schools that gives significant scholarships, which I understand you have to designate the schools to be your first choice to qualify…are these scholarship mutually exclusive? If you receive a $2500 scholarship does it mean you are no longer qualified for the college sponsored ones?

2

There isn’t another test to go from NMF to NMS. To become a NMS just means that you’ve received an official NM scholarship from a college, a corporation, or NMCorp.

The college scholarship are awarded first (choose by May 1st), so you won’t miss that opportunity.

3

You can accept a large college sponsored scholarship and still receive a smaller NM or corporate scholarship. My DD received both but she did have to promise to use the corporate scholarship on nontaxable items which include tuition, fees and books. Her university scholarship covers tuition and fees, so the corporate scholarship is covering books. I have also read that if you are receiving any need based aid in addition to the university scholarship, it might be reduced by the amount of the outside NM/corp scholarship.

4

My son received both the corporate NMF scholarship and the college NMF scholarship. He had to forgo the small “official” part of the college NMF award (which was $1k), but he got to receive the free tuition, housing, etc.