<p>Does being Commended actually help you get into college, or is it just a nice consolation for almost being a semi-finalist?</p>
<p>To me it seems like it only matters if you are a semi-finalist or better</p>
<p>might as well put it if you are short on awards</p>
<p>The scores you earned to get the NMSC will help you get into college. The award itself is secondary, but nice to list on the app.</p>
<p>Only 50,000 or so students get this in the entire country - list it!</p>
<p>Since the cutoffs are so different by state, I would imagine they would view commended as at least somewhat impressive. A commended score for one student could be 5 points higher than a semi-finalist score for another. So, I think they would rather view the general category as mildly impressive, rather than penalize for not getting semi-finalist.</p>