@JBStillFlying When I wrote “sounds like” I was basing that on others’ info upthread not on any external sources. Sorry.
No problem @MindLife. We can’t find where we knew about the $4,000 - my husband either heard that from a colleague with an NMF kid there, or we read it on the website . . . in any case not there now so we’ll see what happens. D17 has enrolled and is going - hopefully she get a little bit of National Merit aid!
It’s all so confusing. The UChicago website says that National Merit Finalists who receive the scholarship from UChicago will receive $2000 renewable for 4 years, but does that mean that any National Merit Finalist accepted will automatically get that scholarship? Doesn’t matter that much for my son, since $2000 a year probably won’t be enough to change our financial situation - sure it’s nice but isn’t going to be the deciding factor.
Used to be that you were guaranteed $4,000 regardless if you won the $2,000 sponsored scholarship. If you did - lucky you! - they’d just deduct that from the $4,000. This year, it’s not even clear that you can get the $2,000 guaranteed!
Hubby checked with his colleague whose NM kid started there this past fall. Kid got $4,000.
Looks like it is back to $4,000 …
National Merit Finalists
National Merit Finalists are granted awards from one of three sources: the National Merit Corporation, a sponsoring corporation, or from the University of Chicago. If you are a finalist in this competition, simply report to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation that the University of Chicago is your first-choice school. National merit finalists will receive a minimum award of $4,000 per year renewable for four years from either UChicago or an outside source; in cases where a student receives a National Merit scholarship sponsored by an outside source that is less than $4,000, the University of Chicago will make up the difference between this award and our minimum National Merit award (for example, we would provide an additional $3,000 per year to a student who receives a $1,000 per year National Merit scholarship sponsored by a company or organization).
https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/scholarships 04 15 2017
Yay! How’d that happen?
@JerryTN can you please re-post your link? It’s not working for some reason. Thanks!
@JBStillFlying link is working for me. I found it first in search results for “national merit odyssey” on uchicago.edu after the Chicago scholarships. But now I’m starting to worry it is an old page.
Grrr - @JerryTN I can’t find reference to any money now and when I google about the $2,000 I’m redirected to a page that I need to sign into which is completely confusing. I’m now wondering if they have gotten rid of any specific amount. This is infuriating.
@JBStillFlying Trying the link again, at the risk of spreading old info, collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/page/scholarships . Try typing it in?
I share your frustration.
@JBStillFlying The same thing happened to me last night. It asked for a CNET username and password. However, as of 7:06 EDT this morning, it’s working for me and it says what JerryTN says. (If JerryTN was searching for Odyssey, perhaps s/he had a CNET ID, and now the University has taken the password protection off the page so we can all see? Or they had it off when JerryTN saw it, put the password on, and have now taken it off again? Anyway, try it again.) -From a Fellow Parent of a Class of 2021 National Merit Scholar who was relying on that $16,000
I called last Friday, and after being transferred to two different people, the lady told me that you can only get one of the other, meaning D can only get $2500 NMS money. She said U Chicago will give only 2k if she didn’t get the 2500, and it is either/or and this is NMSC’s decision and I should call them for questions?!
I called a couple of month ago, and heard $4k for four years, so I don’t know what to believe. Was in the car at the time, so didn’t pursue.
OK, it’s gone again.
It’s coming and going for me, and I don’t know exactly why. When I open a private window and put the URL in that way, it requests CNET ID. When I go back to regular window (with cookies), it first said “oops” … then I clicked again, and it showed me the page with the the $4,000 info. So, don’t know what to say.
Why would UChicago believe it has any discretion in this matter?
If there was a UChicago web page that promised a $4000 per year National Merit scholarship for National Merit Finalists, and the page existed long after the UChicago Class of 2020 applications were done (by January 2016), then its entire point was to serve as an incentive for the Class of 2021.
I certainly saw that page well into last summer, and others here did too.
@hebegebe I did too. D applied with the understanding that if she got NMF she would receive $4,000 from UChicago (assuming she got in).
@Lea111 and @JerryTN it’s still not working for me but I’ll try throughout the day.
@SincererLove the way it works is that you either get the one-time $2500 or the college-sponsored but not both. NMSC explains that in its materials and that’s been true pretty much every year of the competition. What UChicago has done for the past few years (and certainly for the class of 2020) is make up the difference so that you always got $4,000 per year. Most people didn’t worry about what part was “technically” a “college-sponsored” scholarship and what part was merit aid offered over and above - as it was $4,000 total in every case. However, things might be different this year. My D did not get the $2,500 one-time scholarship and she had been banking on the $4,000 per year (switched to $2,000 at some point a couple months ago and now disappeared altogether from the website! My husband thinks that last part is more directed toward future classes - let’s hope that’s true!).
@SincererLove @JBStillFlying Surprised someone told @SincererLove that collecting $2,500 from the NMSC precludes a $2000/year award from the university. That would be at odds with the university’s past practices, and a little silly. Why punish students when you can collect $2,500 from a non-university source?
Here’s how it worked when I applied: If you were selected as a NM Finalist, you were guaranteed $4,000/year. Anyone who received a one-time $2,500 award from NMSC would see that deducted from their university award as a first-year. That is, their $4,000 award would consist of $2,500 from the NMSC and $1,500 from the university. In subsequent years, said student would receive the full $4,000 from the university’s coffers.
The NM Finalist award didn’t stack with most scholarships offered by the university; recipients of $20,000 University Scholarship and a $4,000 NM Finalist Scholarship would end up with a $16,000 University Scholarship and the $4,000 NM Finalist award, so the NM Scholarship wouldn’t affect total aid.
NM Finalist awards, and other merit awards from the university, did stack with many outside scholarships; if a NM Finalist also received a scholarship from the Ambidextrous Inuits from Tuvalu Foundation, covering the full cost of attendance, that student would end up with $4,000 in disposable income. Need-based grants, on the other hand, could certainly be affected by outside scholarships.
It’s possible the student/staffer @SincererLove spoke to misunderstood the university’s policy on National Merit scholarships. The policy when I applied saved the university a fair amount of money; by deducting $2,500 from a first-year’s NM Scholarship, they could spend less on the NM grant program. That’s still true if the scholarship is now $2,000; the university could simply provide $5,500 in scholarship money over a NM recipient’s four years at the College - for instance, by giving a student $1,500 as a second-year and $2,000 as a 3rd/4th-year. By making this an either/or choice, the university could end up paying out $8,000 instead of $5,500 over four years for no good reason. Why they’d do this, if applicants are given a choice, is beyond me.
The only way this would save the college money is if students no longer have a choice (as the employee @SincererLove spoke to suggested). If winners of a $2,500 NM scholarship are ineligible for the university’s NM scholarship, the college would save $5,500 per recipient of a NMSC grant. This seems nonsensical - why punish successful finalists? And it is. The only explanation that makes any sense is this: the university’s NM Finalist grant is now officially part of the NMSC program. It’s a “college-sponsored scholarship,” so recipients are chosen from a pool of unsuccessful finalists. In keeping with NMSC guidelines, “College officials also determine each winner’s stipend within a range of $500 to $2,000 per year” (which would explain the drop to $2,000). The NMSC expects UChicago to offer at least 60 scholarships - far less than the number of students who are eligible, so if the College is aiming for the bare minimum, that could explain why some students haven’t received a scholarship. Students can’t tell the NMSC they’d rather receive a college-sponsored scholarship than a $2,500 grant, so NM scholarship winners lose out.
More on the current guidelines here: http://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/images/gid2/editor_documents/student_guide.pdf?gid=2&pgid=61
I don’t know if UChicago’s NM scholarship has always been under the NMSC umbrella - I couldn’t locate the NMS guide for my cohort online. If that’s always been the case, there must be another explanation for this change. If this change is fairly recent, others (reducing the scholarship to $2,000, making this an either/or proposition) could be required by NMSC policy. Of course, the university knows the NMSC’s policy, so this would still be a deliberate cost-cutting move. I wouldn’t put it past College Aid or the university - it’s very Zimmeresque.
TL;DR: The university might be hurting NM scholarship winners and keeping its hands clean thanks to a nonsensical NMSC policy. Like any decision made in Levi Hall, it’s hard to tell if this is a bug or a feature. Lots to think about.
In other news, I haven’t heard anything about the $20,000 NM FInalist scholarship @Dolemite mentioned. The terms for NMF scholarships were clearly spelled out on the admissions website until this year, with no mention of anything of the sort. I suspect this NM Finalist received $4,000 (or $2,000, or $5,000, depending on when said student applied) and other scholarships adding up to $20,000.
@DunBoyer I think I confused NMF with NHRP. NHRP awards apparently can be up to $30K. Also apparently it’s possible for someone to get the now $2K NMF award and a minimum S4KvNHRP award.
@Dolemite, are you saying that at UChicago, NHRP scholarships are up to $30,000? Can you let us know where you got this information?
Maybe it’s worded a little differently in the description but it’s under the NHRP header:
Not sure if I’m allowed to link: https://collegeadmissions.uchicago.edu/costs/scholarships/neubauer
Yes, thanks just found it too. That’s a huge award for NHRP.