<p>the national merit corporation says finalists can only get one award: college, company, or from the national merit company. so if you get named a scholar, you get $2500 from the company, right? wouldnt it be better to get, say, the $13,000 scholarship given to finalists from the university of texas??? it seems weird that the finalist scholarship is worth more than the award for actual scholars.</p>
<p>If a finalist gets a financial award/scholarship, they are then designated a scholar; that is, by definition, a National Merit Scholar is one who gets a scholarship ($$), no matter what its source -- college, corporation, etc.</p>
<p>That's why a Finalist would designate UT as his first-choice college if he wants the scholarship from UT.</p>
<p>oh ok. so who usually gets the money from the national merit company?</p>
<p>why would only about 1/2 of the finalists become scholars?</p>
<p>Because there are roughly 15,000 finalists and only 7,500 NM scholarships.</p>
<p>
If your school gives you a full ride, they may “take it” for themselves (though “take” is probably poor word choice seeing as you have a full freakin’ ride!). Many schools mention that their aid includes aid from NMSC or corporate sponsors through NMSC, which means that they decrease your award amount once they receive the check.</p>
<p>Yes, until yesterday, I thought you could get funds from corporate sponsored as well as National Merit but looks like that is not the case. We have a chance to get funds through our corporation $4000 - $8000 renewable for 4 years. This would be a much better option than the $2500 one time from National Merit…or $2000/year from a particular college. </p>
<p>Can someone verify that I’m understanding this correctly, please? Thanks. </p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf</a> </p>
<p>“Some 8,200 National Merit Scholarships of three types
and approximately 1,500 Special Scholarships will be
awarded in 2010; these 9,700 awards will have a combined
value of more than $48 million. Different types of scholarships
will be offered, but no student can receive more
than one monetary award from NMSC.”</p>
<p>Stockmom123 - I think you have it right. My S got his Finalist letter yesterday, and we interpret the scholarship explanation to mean you can only take money from one source and you can accept only one scholarship offer. You should definitely take the Corporation Scholarship you described. It is a great offer (provided the funds will help pay for the college of your choice.) Congratulations!</p>
<p>Haven’t actually got offered anything or been named Finalist. Son is only a junior but did well on PSAT (226) so I’m just trying to figure all of this out just in case and trying to decide what kind of college would actually be affordable.</p>
<p>There seems to be a whole lot of confusion about NM awards. My D got notification this week that she’s a finalist. This is our third child to be named finalist - one kid went to UF when they were giving free a free ride (now it’s just tuition) and the second is at UCF on pretty much a free ride, so we have a lot of experience with the procedure.</p>
<p>D2 got one of the $2500 NM awards AND the UCF award. We almost didn’t accept the NM award because we thought it would be in lieu of the much more substantial UCF award, but when I phoned NM, the lady there thought we were crazy for even considering not accepting theirs. And she was right.</p>
<p>Schools that offer substantial award packages to finalists frequently call them NM awards, but they’re really from the college’s pool of scholarship money and they’re given for the combination of GPA, SAT scores, community service etc. that NM automatically screens for them.</p>
<p>So, if student names first choice school as “x” and then doesn’t get enough additional aid to make attendance possible, are they then able to ‘transfer’ their choice to another school in say April? Thanks</p>