<p>^hahahaha</p>
<p>Anyways, it’s hard to fathom why the NMSC chose the PSAT as their “test”…why can’t they evaluate GPA, financial need, actual SAT or ACT scores (which for all their faults are better than the PSAT IMHO), or even just call up ETS to create their own, better test.</p>
<p>I think is “unfair” that some kids get “a 210 on the PSAT with no prep” and some don’t.</p>
<p>Only states that were >220 last year (for 2010 seniors) were Massachusetts and Maryland (DC uses the highest state qualifying score). One of my kids had a 218 in MD and had a SAT significantly higher. Kinda stinks, but S was fairly philosophical about it. We know he has gotten a far better education and opportunities here than his cousins have received in other states with lower cutoffs.</p>
<p>NMSF is designed to reward the top 1/2 of 1% in each state. I’m not having a pity party about it if my kid was “merely” 99.2%, ya know?</p>
<p>^^ They do evaluate actual SAT scores and GPA… And they’re not going to evaluate financial need for a merit scholarship.</p>
<p>here’s my take on it - the low scoring states dont have the access to prep classes that the high scoring states do. they are (generally) the low population states or states with a lot of remote areas where kids would have to travel an hour or two to take a prep class. try finding a kaplin class in vt or wyoming or montana.</p>
<p>Also try taking an AP class with a total HS class of 7 (my college roommate graduated #2 of 7 in a farming community).</p>
<p>*It’s an ironic form of affirmative action for the states that are the most against affirmative action. *</p>
<p>It’s not affirmative action. Those who make NMF from low-scoring states are the highest performing in that state. If it was “affirmative action” then ethnicity would be part of the equation. In fact, since the low cut-off is often related to the “poorness” of the state, it’s actually the opposite of AA. Those who oppose AA often support economic AA (meaning that the parameter should be income, not ethnicity.)</p>
<p>And, stop assuming that all/most of the kids from those states have low scores. The low cut-off just means that they have to go that low to get the top 1%. It doesn’t mean that most/all NMFs from those states have low PSATS. There may only be a few at that low cut-off. No NMF at my son’s school “just made the cut-off.”</p>
<p>For instance…Michigan has a cut-off of 209. Do you really think that all/most of the MI NMF’s are scoring 209? I doubt it. </p>
<p>As for those who have high SAT/ACT, yet didn’t make NMF because of PSAT scores and didn’t get scholarship money, then you chose to apply to schools that don’t give good scholarships for SAT/ACT scores. That was your choice.</p>
<p>My NMF son has free tuition, housing, and a few other goodies. My non-NMF son has free tuition plus $4500 per year in scholarship money. A bit of a difference, but not a huge one.</p>
<p>I raised the “does state variation create fairness or unfairness” question, but I did not offer an opinion. Part of my reason was that I still do no know what I conclude re it. But I do know there are huge disparities in state-by-state funding and access to educational opportunities. Recently released US Dept of Ed data shows that UT is by far the lowest funded K-12 education system, measured on a per pupil per year basis. You would have ADD about $1200 per pupil for us to catch Mississippi. Some eastern states spend 2.5-3x more per pupil than UT.</p>
<p>So I guess it is not unexpected–perhaps fair–that the 99.5% threshold is therefore lower.</p>
<p>Every system has its unfair niches and things that make no sense. It takes a lot of time and trouble to change some of those provisions with a risk that everyone with interest in the funds and program will want to put in his/her 2 cents when such changes are proposed, so things are often just left alone. </p>
<p>As you go through the college app process, college, job, life itself, you’ll find that there is much unfair out there. Much of the fairness you get as a child, young person is due to the protection we give our young and the sense of fairness we try to instill, not a reflection of the way things work in the world.</p>
<p>“if it was “affirmative action” then ethnicity would be part of the equation.”</p>
<p>I was under the impression that “affirmative action” could apply to any group subject to discrimination, including women, and not exclusively to race. I think the analogy here is that the subgroup is judged against others in the subgroup, and the best of the subgroup is given an opportunity. Not perfect, but allows states from being underrepresented for a rarity of reasons.</p>
<p>And just like all kids from low scoring states, don’t have “subpar” scores, all urms don’t have “subpar” scores. The numbers come from averages of a big group, and not individuals.</p>
<p>It’s commonly known that a kid from some state like South Dakota or Oregon is going to be more attractive to a NE college than another kid from the NYC, DC, Philly, Boston suburbs. They can fill the class with qualified kids from those areas.</p>
<p>I have heard a lot of the criticisms against NMF (including from my S who is NMF) and these criticisms are valid. However, what is an alternative method of giving national merit scholarships which meet the the following criteria:</p>
<p>[ol]
[<em>] Is able to pick the very top (above the 99.5%tile range) and not just people interested in art or science etc, but across the board.
[</em>]Adjusts for regional disparities, as has been pointed out someone in WY may not have the same opportunities as someone in MA
[<em>] Is fairly straightforward to administer and does not cost a fortune for the administrative costs. NMSC is self funded, no tax payer funds.
[</em>]Is as transparent as possible, so that there is no criticism or lawsuits etc.
[/ol]</p>
<p>In my day, NMF was a big, big deal. The scholarship money pretty much paid a year’s tuition. The dollar amount has stayed the same but college costs have skyrocketed to the point that the scholarship just covers some kids’ books. Sad.</p>
<p>Also many more colleges would supplement the NMF scholarship so that kids got full rides at schools like Duke, Hopkins, to name a few. Now there are not that many schools that do this. The auto awards are much scarcer, though there are still some out there. I guess the colleges did not like the way the NMS were chosen, either, and are using their own criteria to pick those students to whom they want to award scholarships, and National Merit has just become a line entry on the awards section of the apps for the most part. Still those who make finalist, have the high SAT scores that colleges want and on which most base merit awards, </p>
<p>In a sense the National Merit state by state distribution is very valid, since those states where there are fewer high flying candidates may have geographics on their side for getting merit awards. I have seen that happen with some NE colleges that are working at being more national. Getting into BC from the NE is more difficult than if you come from underrepresented parts of the country. Brown U has out and out said, that it is tougher for those living in the NYC area, Boston area to gain admissions because there are so many apps from there. Instead of doing a lottery pull of one of those kids, if there is an app from Alaska or Idaho, they will snap that up for admissions. Not saying, the chosen student is necessarily not has outstanding as the batch from the NE, but he would stand out because of where he lives and not be in the stack that has to somehow be whittled down in size.</p>
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<p>Ah, but where did you apply to college? Your amazing stats are the sort that people need to apply to the tippy-top schools. Yet those are the very schools that don’t offer merit aid. There are plenty of schools that would have offered merit aid with those stats, many of which offer little or no National Merit money. National Merit is not the be-all and end-all of merit aid.</p>
<p>^ I went to the University of Texas at Austin. The only merit aid I’ve ever heard of this school giving out (to Freshmen based on HS performance) are the NMF scholarships.</p>
<p>I know I could have gotten tons of merit aid at random tier-3 schools in neighboring states, but I didn’t want to go to such academically-poor schools.</p>
<p>^ UT gutted their NM program, so it’s a moot point. You obviously are not going to find merit aid at schools that don’t need to recruit higher-stat students…</p>
<p>SlitheyTove (#34) said what I was gonna say.</p>
<p>Why Too Kay, looking back at some of your earlier posts, you wrote that UT gave you $1k in merit money. Agreed, it’s not a huge amount, but it’s significantly more than zero. Since UT no longer awards National Merit, as noimagination states, I’m not following why you are complaining about merit aid at UT.</p>
<p>As for “academically poor” “random tier-3 schools in neighboring states”, full tuition at Pitt and the possibility of a full ride at Pitt isn’t something to take lightly. CC boards are full of stories of students who had tippy-top acceptances in hand, and gladly took the Pitt offer instead. You chose to go elsewhere. Again, that doesn’t mean that you were awarded not one dollar of merit aid.</p>
<p>Did you apply to USC? That’s a school with an excellent business department that awards generous merit aid.</p>
<p>Many kids complain that the school they want the most did not give them the merit money they wanted. Sometimes you can’t have it both ways.</p>
<p>That 1k ‘scholarship’ doesn’t make a lot of sense. At the end of the year they released a list of all the students that won it. I knew two of them, and after discussing with them none of us know where the money came from. We don’t have comparable stats, and we weren’t even all freshmen. I’m unsure if it was merit or not.</p>
<p>As far as the full ride mention, I wasn’t talking about Pitt. I mean schools that list minimum SAT scores for X number of dollars of scholarship on their website. I never applied to any of those schools, they contacted me through the mail.</p>
<p>Likewise with Pitt. I never applied to the school, sent SAT scores, etc. It was just some sort of offer that showed up one day. It’s got a very lowly ranked business program, so I don’t consider it an option.</p>
<p>What I was really trying to say with all my stats, other than NMF, is that there aren’t a lot of scholarships based solely on merit. You always see those “A GPA isn’t everything” scholarships or “More than just a GPA” scholarships. They kinda annoy me, since all I am actually looking for scholarships where the GPA matters, or where the test scores matter. It’s almost like they don’t exist. So many scholarships have a minimum GPA of 2.0 that it’s almost laughable to consider them “scholarships” and not financial aid at that point.</p>
<p>/rant</p>