<p>*What I am now wondering is what kind of money might be out there for kid#2. But if colleges don’t determine their scholarship money until the summer, then I guess the pressure will still be on senior year… *</p>
<p>You are in the same position that we were in. DS1 was NM and received similar amounts of merit offers from various schools. DS2 just missed the previous year’s cutoff, so we suspected that he wouldn’t make NMSF, and he didn’t.</p>
<p>So, we concentrated on merit scholarships that didn’t require NM status for DS2. He had an ACT 33 and a 4.5 GPA, so we knew that he’d qualify for some good money. He ended up getting several good offers. He accepted two scholarships from the same school - one was for full tuition and the other was for an extra $2500 per year (which pays for most of his meal plan). So, for him, we only have to pay for his housing and books. (He also received a $2k per year scholarship from my H’s company, which pays for the rest of his meal plan, course fees, and misc.)</p>
<p>We’ve found that the schools that give the best NM scholarships often also give the best regular merit scholarships (altho that’s not always the case, but it’s a place to start looking.) We also looked at schools that gave assured scholarships for his stats (no competition). BTW…many of those schools have Dec 1 deadlines (or earlier), so be aware of that! Many kids now are looking for scholarships and have missed the deadlines. :(</p>
<p>If your DS2 has not yet taken SAT/ACT tests, then he needs to do so. He needs to take both. Many kids score higher on one test than the other, so that can make a huge difference scholarship-wise. There are many kids on this forum that wouldn’t have qualified for big merit scholarships based on the SAT, but did qualify using their ACT (and vice versa). </p>
<p>I don’t know of any top 20s that are still giving full tuition merit scholarships to NMFs anymore. I think USC is one of the highest ranking to give big NM scholarships, and theirs is a 1/2 tuition scholarship.</p>