<p>Hey, would there be any benefit to listing MIT as my first choice now (if I'm applying early action)? Is MIT not impressed by someone who is a semifinalist (because pretty much half of everyone who applies is one)? I am seeking financial aid, and everyone I know who listed MIT as their top choice didn't get any additional money from MIT. Should I list another (more money-giving) school as my top choice, since listing MIT doesn't seem to have any positive aspects?</p>
<p>MIT only offers need-based scholarships, so listing them as your #1 school on your National Merit application won’t have any effect on financial aid. I’m not sure how it’s looked upon from an admissions standpoint, but if you’re only concerned with playing your award for more money (totally legit, in my opinion), you should definitely designate another school as #1.</p>
<p>There’s no benefit to listing MIT as a first-choice school for National Merit – it doesn’t help for admissions.</p>
<p>But if you name a different school as your top choice and are awarded a national merit scholarship by them, doesn’t that exclude you from being considered from any of the “portable” scholarships? So if you ended up going to MIT you’d have NO national merit money. I would just list the schools you really want to go to.</p>
<p>You can just put “undecided” and make MIT your choice later if you get in EA and decide to go.</p>
<p>IIRC, the ‘portable’ scholarships are something like $1,000. I feel like if you could get up to a full ride (like Arizona does, for example), and you think that you might want to go to this school instead, it’s probably worth it.</p>
<p>I overslept and missed the PSAT in high school, so I never had to make this decision. But it seems like the best thing for you to do is either 1. be honest, not worry about scholarship money, and put down your actual first choice on the form or 2. put down the school that will give you the most money (that you actually would like to attend, of course).</p>
<p>Since getting into MIT is such a long shot for pretty much everybody under the sun, qualified or not, you need to seriously consider the possibility that if you try your luck for a portable scholarship with the goal of using it at MIT, you might subsequently not get into MIT. You will then either have or not have (if it doesn’t work out) your $1,000 scholarship, when you could have had a guaranteed full ride to a state school. </p>
<p>So that all seems to point toward putting a state school or other school that offers full rides for National Merit first.</p>
<p>But I’ll give you my own experience. I put Ohio State first. Yet even if I hadn’t gotten into MIT, I would have gone to Brown or Carnegie Mellon or U Chicago or Olin or any of the other ~10 schools I had listed before it in my heart. And most of them did offer me merit-based scholarships of varying sizes, all larger than $1,000. I don’t recall off the top of my head if any of them give NM money, but I doubt it.</p>
<p>The moral? Don’t bother putting a safety school as your first choice for National Merit unless you’ll really attend it (and NOT just in the event that all the other schools reject you, because that shouldn’t happen if you’ve picked your safeties, matches and reaches well). Put the school you would most like to attend that gives a hoot about NM.</p>