<p>My daughter is a semifinalist. She wrote her essay and, in all honesty, it's not very good. Her literature teacher reviewed it and felt that it didn't answer the prompt, but my daughter disagreed and is leaving it as-is.</p>
<p>Can a bad essay cost you a shot at being a Finalist? If so, just exactly how bad would that essay have to be?</p>
<p>(I thought she'd just hammer out a somewhat vanilla essay about herself and her aspirations, but instead came up with something odd and, in my wife's opinion, childish.)</p>
<p>Concerned Steve</p>
<p>My son’s school told him that it didn’t matter how good his National Merit essay was, so he put no thought into it and didn’t have anyone look at it. I assume that it was pretty bad. He did become a finalist, but did not receive the $1500 one-time scholarship. I believe that if he had put more effort into it, he may have received this scholarship (his other stats were great). Since he is now attending Princeton (which does not participate in the NM program), the $1500 one time award would have helped out. If your daughter plans on attending a college that participates in the NM program, I don’t believe that the essay will have a negative impact.</p>
<p>It is a $2500 one-time scholarship by NM.</p>
<p>As TheSparrow said, a poor essay likely won’t prevent her from moving to NMF status (unless, perhaps, it was a COMPLETE blow-off such that NMSC determined they essentially didn’t complete the application?). It WILL affect likelihood of receiving a $2500 NMSC scholarship. As for the corporate or university-awarded scholarships, the essay (in most cases) isn’t a factor, as they typically award their scholarships to any NMF who (for corporations) is a child of an employee or (for universities) made them their first choice on the college selection portion of the NMSC application.</p>
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