<p>Quick question about NEU's National Merit Scholarship -- you don't actually have to win the National Merit award to be award Northeastern's full-tuition scholarship, do you? You just have to be a National Merit Finalist?</p>
<p>EDITED TO ADD: Also, is the scholarship renewable? Would it carry you through all four/five years?</p>
<p>That’s what I understand from the threads on this topic posted earlier this year. If you are a finalist you get full tuition, plus this year they gave free all expense paid trips to Northeastern with no commitment to enroll.</p>
<p>As long as you’re a finalist, you should be considered.</p>
<p>The scholarship is renewed assuming you meet certain academic requirements - mainly maintaining a certain GPA (Can’t recall what it is). </p>
<p>The scholarship will only cover tuition for eight semesters (If you’re attending for five years, you can anticipate two or three co-ops, during which you will not pay tuition).</p>
<p>The requirements for NMF scholarship renewal are a 3.0 GPA, 100 hours of community service and no serious disciplinary problems (e.g. selling drugs from your dorm room).</p>
<p>I believe the paid trip to Boston is for Northeastern Scholar program acceptees, not NMF acceptees.</p>
<p>@TomSr. </p>
<p>I wasn’t clear about that since it was discussed awhile ago. Also, I didn’t realize the scholar program was different.</p>
<p>And just a quick clarification about the National Merit awards. Semi-finalist standings (based on the 2011 test) will be announced in about a week, depending on your school. Semi-finalists then submit an essay, counselor recommendation, and other information (similar to a subset of a college application) to NMSC to be considered for the National Merit Finalist status. Then in mid-December Finalists are announced. About 95% of Semi-Finalists become Finalists, and once that happens you are done. There is nothing beyond National Merit Finalist. Then you either get a college-sponsored scholarship, a corporate-sponsored scholarship, or a NMSC-sponsored scholarship (or nothing, if you make a large misstep during the process). My advice would be not to rush into selecting your first-choice college. Put “undecided” on your reply card and then wait, but not too long. Because of the timing of the college awards, IMO it’s best to do your first-choice selection around Feb if your choice is clear by then. If you wait until April, your college might have distributed all its scholarship money already. If you pick your first-choice early, and a college offers you an award, and <em>then</em> you change your college choice, you get nothing. Hope I stated this clearly enough. If not, just ask. I went through this process with my older S two years ago.</p>
<p>S just got info this week at school (Tuesday) from GC. The letter says to keep it hush-hush until the 12th of September (Wednesday)</p>
<p>He just logged in to print out the info…and althoug he could get onto the website, couldn’t print the rules or any information. The pdf’s would not open. Anyone else have this problem??</p>
<p>Do they wait until the 12th to make the website fully functional? (that is the only thing I could think of…
Help!</p>
<p>CollegeBoundCA, I had the same issue when I tried to open the forms from a PC. Was able to get them all to open from my Mac, though.</p>