I’m a finalist and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation sent me a letter about a $1000 scholarship. Is this different from the Northeastern National Merit scholarship?
Northeastern offers National Merit Finalists a $30,000/year scholarship, if accepted. The money you receive from NMSC would reduce the scholarship that Northeastern provides by that amount.
so basically whether I accept or decline the $1000 scholarship nothing happens to my financial aid right?
They would want you to accept it I believe. “Nanotechnology” would be the one to message on this because she was NMF.
For clarification, NEU does not automatically give $30K to finalists, which is what we had thought was the case. It is “up to” $30K and our son who will be starting in the fall got less. To make things a bit more confusing, of the amount given by NEU a small portion ($1-2K) is the official National Merit Scholarship Corporation scholarship that gets paid from the corporation to NEU (allowing the designation as “scholar” as opposed to just finalist), but actually is funded by NEU. What the poster may be referring to is the letter from NMSC confirming the awarding of the official college sponsored award (the smaller portion) and letting the student know that he/she has to formally accept that and agree to the conditions of the scholarship.
@BostonDad2 I believe NEU will only reduce the 30K if you are already getting other FA or aid from them right? If you are not getting any FA from NEU, that’s where they give you the full 30K. Is that your experience?
@BostonDadof2 Hmmmm. Applicants may be awarded other merit aid (Dean’s Scholarship) of less than $30,000. Once Northeastern has received confirmation that your son has selected them as his first choice the NMF $30,000 will replace the lesser merit scholarship. Did the award letter state “NMF Scholarship” of less than $30,000? Has your son selected Northeastern as his first choice?
Otherwise I would advise you to call them Tuesday for clarification.
Dean’s scholarship was replaced with with a somewhat larger NMF scholarship of less than $30K and yes he designated NEU as first choice, otherwise he wouldn’t have been eligible to receive. We did call for clarification and it was explained that the NMF scholarship is an amount “up to” $30K, as it does say on the website. It also was explained that like the Dean’s amount, exact NMF amounts awarded depend on consideration of merit factors such as test scores and grades. I don’t know the history of the NMF scholarship at NEU, but I got the sense that it used to be full tuition and automatic Honors, then guaranteed $30K, and now just an unspecified amount up to $30K. Still a pretty good thing for NM finalists and far better than any other schools we looked at.
Whatever you do, don’t call the financial aid office about declining your scholarship. :)) I played phone tag for a week after the person who answered the phone told me I had to decline or forfeit my NEU NM scholarship (which is $30k). They seem to be very shaky on the details.
@BostonDad2 But you also had need based aid in your package right? I think what happens is that they can reduce your NMS award by some of the need based aid they are giving you, instead of just reducing the need based aid portion. I’m not sure why that is beneficial to the school (to reduce NMS aid vs need based aid) - but there must be a reason they do that.
@suzyQ7 Need based grants will increase by the same percentage as the increase in tuition each year. Merit scholarships are a fixed amount that will not increase (except full tuition scholarships of course.)
So just curious, does this mean that Northeastern will apply both the National Merit and need-based aid but reduce one of them? So your total package would still end up >30k if you are demonstrating a reasonable amount of aid?
Son was admitted EA and was given package that included mix of Dean’s scholarship and need grant. We knew that overall package would stay the same when NMF came through, but thought it would be the merit bumped up to $30K and the need portion reduced. We figured that was best for us as we have a son graduating from college next year and therefore anticipated need portion to at least be reduced significantly if not disappear with just one child in school. However, when we called it was explained that the NMF amount was not guaranteed to be $30K and the exact amount is generally based on merit factors such as test scores and grades. But, we also were told that our assumption about need aid being reduced with changed circumstances was wrong. There is what is referred to as the NEU financial aid promise or guarantee that need aid will not be reduced. The rep actually said that we could “hit the lottery” and the need aid would not be reduced in future years. Not complaining because it will benefit us, but that seems almost crazy from an need aid policy standpoint. Further, as Tom Sr. notes, the rep explained that need aid gets increased in proportion to tuition increases, while merit is fixed for the whole 8 semesters. So you are better off getting need aid than merit aid (unless the policy changes). In fact, it seems we might have been better off without the NMF modification to the award, which increased the merit portion (though not to $30K) and reduced the need portion. It may be that if there is no need component of the award, they will give the full $30K, but that is not what the financial aid rep made it sound like.
By what percent did the NMF award reduce the need based aid? Was it still an significantly cheaper package or did it come somewhat close to the just need based aid?