I’m a little confused about the NM scholarship timeline.
“May 1, 2017: NMSC will begin mailing college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offers.”
The scholarship letters BEGIN to mail out May 1st. Isn’t that the date you must let a school know if you accept their admissions offer? Could you be turning down an offer from a school that doesn’t offer NM scholarships on the hope that you’ll get one from that does, only to find out that you didn’t?
Thank you for any insight!
If you get your first-choice college to NMSC before March 1, you will be included in the “first group” referred to that institution for scholarship consideration (the application will allow you to specify your first choice as early as now, and you can always get that information to NMSC later on it you are undecided still).
If you report between March 1 and May 31 you may be included in subsequent groups reported to that college.
May 1 is when the offers are mailed.
May 31 is the final deadline to receive a report of a sponsor college as first choice.
So, give these dates, you might consider the following strategy:
Understand exactly what dollar amounts you are potentially looking at and rank your college choices accordingly.
Get your first-choice college reported to NMSC well before March 1, 2017 so you are in that first-group.
Be talking to your first-choice college’s NM coordinator/liaison to understanding exactly what your chances are, assuming that you are A) named a finalist and B) get your choice into NMSC before March 1. In other words, is it an automatic granting of that scholarship or is there additional uncertainty? If the latter, how do they decide? Your college liaison can answer those questions for you.
The above applies to College-Sponsored scholarships only. The corporate and NM $2500 scholarships have different deadlines. You should check your materials carefully to make sure you understand every deadline.
Thank you…that is really helpful!
@brieandjack
I have added a link to NM below.
It will take you to the national merit scholarship home page>then look below and click on for sponsors> select 2014-2015 Annual Report [ which is a PDF]. This document will provide lots of important info.
The report has a LIST , starting on page 27, of ALL colleges that SPONSOR [ i.e. award] National Merit Scholarships.
It would be an utter waste of time for you or any NMSF to select a NON sponsoring college as your first choice. since those colleges dont award any $$ to NMF’s.
http://www.nationalmerit.org/s/1758/start.aspx?sid=1758&gid=2&pgid=61&cid=160
Just remember that approx 2000 tip-top students are awarded NON Sponsored one time $2500 scholarships given by National Merit corp, that can be used at any college.
@brieandjack Just to further clarify (someone else can correct me if I go wrong)
These offers are just the ones that are going through NMSC. If you are looking at schools that directly offer merit awards to NM students, then those offers can/will be made earlier.
The more significant scholarsips come from the schools directly, and the ones that go through NMSC are more “nice bonuses.” You won’t be basing your college selection on one of the $1k/year NMF scholarships that you might get in May.
@flatkansas do you know how the timing works on those large scholarships? Is there enough lead time after March 1 to include the notice in someone’s FA letter?
I think this is why it’s so important to be talking to those liaisons! They can answer all these questions as well as provide assurances to those NMF’s who require significant merit aid.
@JBFlying … If you’re referring to schools like UKy, Bama, OU, UCF, UT Dallas, etc. their scholarships are automatic for any NMF who has applied and been accepted. If you’re debating/deciding between more than one of those schools, you can leave your choice as “Undecided” until closer to May 1 and not worry about missing out on the large $$ scholarship.
Many of the smaller ($500-$1K per year range) scholarships that other schools offer are also automatic for any NMFs so even if a students doesn’t name that school as their first-choice until after an initial FA/scholarship award letter goes out the school will often add that amount to their final award letter.
In the past there have been a few schools that had their own earlier “school specific” deadline for naming them as a first-choice in order to award their scholarship but if their website does have something like that listed you can always call them directly to clarify.