<p>Okay, so I got my NMSF packet today, and I am a little confused on the whole "only being offered one NM Scholarship" deal. What if, in the spring, you become a National Merit Scholar, but what you really wanted was a college-sponsored scholarship? Do you have to/can you decline the National Merit sponsored scholarship in order to get the full ride to the state school instead?</p>
<p>Sorry, I'm confused :/ Thanks!</p>
<p>bump :)</p>
<p>10char</p>
<p>allstar7, congratulations to your achievement. Any school that offers NM Scholarship will work with you. If you are offered the National Merit sponsored scholarship which is only good for one year, your school will normally continue the scholarship, in various amount depends on the school, in the subsequent years. For those schools that offer big scholarship, e.g. full tuition or full ride, they will just take the one offered by National Merit as part of the total package. In short, you do not need to worry about if you are being short changed. Just identified your first choice school by the dealine, either specified by the school or by NM whichever come first, next year and you will be OK.</p>
<p>Suggest you check with National Merit and your college. If NM selects you for their 1 time award of 2K, you may have the option to decline that and instead choose a higher National Merit college-sponsored award, if the college will only give their money out in that manner. Some colleges will give money on top of NM’s one-time award as long as you are a Finalist or Semifinalist and designate them your first choice with NM. It is confusing, so see how your college handles it.</p>
<p>I could be mistaken about this, but my daughter did receive a corporate NM award this year. So here’s my take on it. Once you fill out the extensive application and are named a finalist (90 percent of semi-finalists become finalists), your application is reviewed to see whether you are eligible for a corporate scholarship (this is determined by whether your mom or dad works for a corporation that sponsors a scholarship, which is something you will indicate on your application, and there are a few other corporate awards). If you do not get one of those, you will be reviewed by state and so many students per state receive the NM sponsored money. At most, you get one of these awards.</p>
<p>Then there are colleges and universities that give scholarships to NM finalists. I did not think that those were really linked to the National Merit Corporation, but I could be wrong. When you fill out your application, you will also name your top-choice school, which you can change at just about any time up until summer (they say May 1, I think). The first-choice school designation can be sort of a game depending on whether you are hoping to get one of the big scholarships offered by one of the schools that really recruit NMFs.</p>
<p>You will not know about the corporate or NM money awards until February (I think), so I don’t think that you would lose a scholarship because you were awarded NM money. I hope this helps. </p>
<p>Congratulations! NM is a nice honor and most of the recruiting materials assume that if you are a semi-finalist, you will be a finalist.</p>
<p>allstar7, congratulations to your achievement. Any school that offers NM Scholarship will work with you. If you are offered the National Merit sponsored scholarship which is only good for one year, your school will normally continue the scholarship, in various amount depends on the school, in the subsequent years.</p>
<p>This is not always true. I had a National Achievement Scholarship in the same aount ($2,500) from NMSC, and it was not renewed in years subsequent to the first one by the school. So yes, you do need to check with the college before you specify which one you will take, but you usually won’t have to worry about this until around March or April. If you get bother an NMSC award and a college-sponsored scholarship from your first-choice, simply ask.</p>
<p>MD Mom, I think there’s a difference between college-sponsored NM awards (which are between $500 and $2,000) and the large full or near-full scholarships that some schools decide to provide to some or all eligible National Merit, Achievement, and/or Hispanic Scholars.</p>
<p>You would hear about corporate awards in early March–they are chosen and notified first. Some college-sponsored NM Scholar awards (these tend to be smaller, about 500-2K) are awarded directly via NM if you notify NM that one of these sponsors is your first-choice college, and you haven’t been selected for a corporate or one-time 2K (early April notification) award from NM. Then there are the non-NM college scholarships that are “piggybacked” onto the NM competition; some of these are very large, and will only be awarded if you designate them as your first choice with NM, but the scholarship checks do not come from National Merit–they are credited to you directly by the college. Oh, and you may not need to be selected as a Scholar to collect these–they usually go to Finalists or even Semifinalists. Clear as mud, huh? Congrats and good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you to everyone for the great responses! They really helped clear things up 
Thank you!!</p>
<p>I’ll add a little to the mix: </p>
<p>Corporate awards do not always come out in early March. NM actually called my son at the end of last March to ask him to name his first choice school (you have until about May 1st to do this, I believe) so that they could tender him what the rep termed a ‘very nice’ offer. He received a renewable award from a local sponsor (not an entity my husband or I work for).</p>
<p>NMSC gives out one time $2500 awards to about 2500 NM Scholars
Corporations give out NMSC designated scholarships of varying amounts
Colleges give out NMSC designated scholarships of $2500
Colleges <em>outside of</em> the NMSC designation offer packages to NM semi/finalists/scholars.</p>
<p>As OP read correctly, only one NMSC designated award can be received by a student. The tricky part is realizing what is coming from whom. It is common e.g. for a student to accept the non-NMSC part of a college package put together for NM winners, and to accept the NMSC designated award from a corporation to maximize their money. NMSC tries to match the highest NMSC designated award to each candidate, and then shears off the others. As an example, if a student picks ‘A’ college as their #1, and the college offers the student an NMSC designated reward, that will preclude receiving an award from NMSC itself. I am not exactly clear how NMSC prevents corporate awards from being closed by college NMSC designated awards. My personal opinion is that these pitfalls can be avoided by remaining ‘undecided’ till the end. Although off-topic, I’ll mention that staying undecided goes a long way towards avoiding the trap of being locked into accepting a modest total package by a #1 choice college.</p>
<p>Hopefully I didn’t make this more confusing than before …</p>
<p>This question may be better answered by given an actual example here. ASU gives to every OOS NMF a scholarship of $23,000 per year for 4 years. That scholarship include the college-sponsored, corporate-sponsored or NMSC-sponsored scholarship award. That means ASU will give you $23,000 if you got no corp-sponsored or NMSC-sponsored award. However, if you get a $2000/year corporate-sponsored award then ASU will give you $21,000/year. The total is still $23,000. Some school might operate this a little differently. But just make sure by the deadline, usually sometime in April, next year you will identify your true first choice college.</p>