I was notified today that I received the national merit FINALIST scholarship from Fordham -2k stipend annually. I was already informed on admission that I got the SEMI-finalist scholarship from them also which covers tuition. I think I’m just being paranoid, but these won’t cancel out, will they? It seems like the semifinalist one is a “college” scholarship while the finalist one is the actual NMS scholarship, but I’m not sure. The finalist one is the only one on the actual osa website.
Again, I think I’m just being paranoid, but I don’t want to risk that full tuition lol.
I would call the financial aid office to confirm but the way it worked for my daughter is that she was able to accept both but half of the NMS reduced her tuition scholarship dollar for dollar. In other words, instead of netting $2500 from being a finalist, she netted $1250. Every last bit helps!
Yes, you can accept both, but the $2000 does not stack with the Semifinalist scholarship. So you get full tuition, only, either way. I spoke at length with Fordham about this.
@Raleigh1968 is speaking of a different scholarship awarded by National Merit. If you had received the $2500 from National Merit, you would have been notified back in March, and the reduction of the Semifinalist award would work in the way Raleigh1968 explained. The $2000 award you received is a Fordham “college sponsored scholarship”, which works differently, and doesn’t give you any extra money, unfortunately.
Oh, thanks for the info @amsunshine ! Pretty scummy of them to send out award notifications if that’s true.
Well, I guess it depends on how you view it. This is the award that makes you an official National Merit Scholar, as opposed to just a Finalist – so there is that! The way my D20’s admissions officer explained it to me is that Fordham looks at their full tuition scholarship as an enhancement of the $2000 college sponsored award.
It is frustrating, though, I know. Their policies on merit awards are puzzling. If you get an additional outside merit award, they reduce their own merit awards by 50% (of the outside award amount). I guess I’d understand if it was a need based award, but reducing merit awards seems strange to me. Oh well!
My son is a current Fordham student and is a recipient of both. The way it works is your full tuition scholarship is reduced by $500 each semester (50% of the $1000). So you net an additional $1000 each year which will help pay for the fees that are not covered by the NMS scholarship.
At Fordham are full tuition scholarships for NMSF automatic/guaranteed?
@ClassOf21inIowa No, they are competitive. Fordham is vague on the minimum stats – I think they say the top 2-3 percent of the applicant pool.