<p>How good does the National Merit look on your transcript? Just how good?</p>
<p>real good, real good....</p>
<p>Even at the schools that don't "offically" offer anything. </p>
<p>Now your going to hear 70 different views of how it matters/doesn't matter... </p>
<p>So your mileage may vary a bit...</p>
<p>when do you find out if you are a semi-finalist or whatever?</p>
<p>September 2008. Ain't it great?</p>
<p>I think that NMSF is one of a class of awards that are just redundant. You got the score, and that's awesome. The award isn't really anything additional. Ditto for all the AP scholar awards in my mind; the scores help, the labels don't.</p>
<p>National AP scholar is ridiculous. I can't imagine doing that well on that many AP's. Plus, unless you do all 8 before senior year, colleges would never know you were an AP scholar.</p>
<p>I'd say that it depends on the type of school that you're applying to. For some state schools, it may be stellar and do wonders for you. For a lot of top-tier schools, the adcoms will see many of these types of awards, so though it is somewhat of an honor, it is not unique and rare at all.</p>
<p>I totally agree with the other two posters above. They care about the scores, not the fluffy titles.</p>
<p>@princess
My school (public, charter) is rediculous, so take this with a grain of salt: I have six APs, all fives. There are at least a dozen people with five APs, all fives - as of the end of sophomore year. We're now in five or six more APs, as juniors.</p>
<p>the label does seem to make a difference to colleges...if you noticed, many of colleges' profiles say something like, "30 National Merit Semi-Finalists" and Commended, etc</p>
<p>Five AP classes as sophomores? that's ridiculous!</p>