National Merit Semifinalist --> Should I put on common app?

Applying to College
1

Hello friends,

I am a national merit semifinalists this year. However, the common application only allows five spots for awards/honors. For me, all five of these spots are being taken up by things that are national/international level such as siemens semifinalists, DECA international top 20, etc.

Do you think I should remove one of these awards in exchange for the national merit semifinalist award? My SAT score is already fairly high (1580) but I am not sure if special emphasis is placed on students who won national merit. If i do switch one of these awards with national merit however, I will also be stating that I wont that award in my EC section (for example I will say that I was in the DECA team as an EC and I won top 20) but I feel that won’t give enough emphasis to the award itself and may be easily overlooked.

What do you guys think??

2

Unless you are shooting for a NM scholarship, leave it off. NM will send the info to your first choice college anyway.

3

Yes, put it on. You can put a sentence about it in Additional Information if you are out of spaces. Then send a follow up email to admissions at all of your schools letting them know if/when you make NFM. Don’t take anything else off.

You want every school to know, not just your first choice NFM school. Plus you may not even decide on that school until after admission decisions are made. Finally, Admissions might not even be the ones who receive the info if you just let the NM organization inform them.