I am cheering you all on…
I’m cheering for all of you as well!
we are on the edge in CA…I think we will miss it. Please anybody report if they hear of any cutoffs!
I’m surprised this thread blew up so massively. Can’t wait to see my NMS results either
Does anyone know of an updated list of the best scholarships for NMF for class of 2019? I just saw Alabama went back up a little. My D wants to swim so she is mainly looking at the ones that also have swim fit. She has an official visit scheduled at Idaho next month and is looking at UNM as the other. Most of the schools either don’t have a swim team or have a really fast swim team. They basically get her for “free” so they seem pretty positive about that.
221 in Kansas. Have been pretty optimistic all year but starting to have “what if we go up 3” thoughts. Hoping we hear something next week.
Been sweating it all summer here in PA. Sitting at 219 hoping it doesn’t go up.
Colleges adjust their NM scholarships each year, their updated scholarships usually are posted in September. You need to check each college carefully each year.
Wait… you seriously have to wait nearly a year after taking the test (October of junior year) to find out what the cutoff was (late August of senior year)? That’s nuts!
@washugrad lol - yup! And these last few days seem to be the worst! 221 in CO and sweating it even wth a one point buffer over last year.
@washugrad - cut them some slack - those sliderules aren’t easy to operate!
Seriously - while the timing probably hasn’t changed in 40+ years, the technology obviously has. Hence the frustration. But there are a couple things that take precedence before they can get around to declaring NMSF’s:
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They have to close out the current contest, which starts to heat up right after that new batch of PSAT scores is available and ends in June.
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They have to confirm contact and school info. for pretty much everyone who is “moving on” in the competition. Remember, the student “self reports” that information at first. Every school is contacted. Most no doubt respond but just like there are laggards who don’t bother telling an SF that he/she has made it, there are schools that don’t know to provide the verification in a timely manner for whatever reason. They send out the requests in the spring right after determining the commended value.
NMSC can hire twice the staff but that cuts into scholarship monies. Better to keep the current system the way it is. The alternative would likely be to have everything take the PSAT in July before senior year! Not. Gonna. Happen.
"NMSC can hire twice the staff but that cuts into scholarship monies. Better to keep the current system the way it is. "
They don’t need to hire twice the staff, they could actually probably get rid of half the staff and provide the same product. The way they distribute the announcement of the semi finalists is ridiculous. You will see on this thread over the next few weeks how ridiculous - principals who’s snail mail package with the winner certificates are buried on their desk, etc.It should all be available to the student online, right away. Then sent electronically to the school.
The main reason for the drawn-out timing is not because bulk mail is taking an extra few days to arrive at someone’s home or school. That’s annoying more than anything else; it doesn’t explain why the students sit the PSAT in the fall and find out their status beginning 10 months later.
Notifying both student and school with the information will cover both bases for sure and go a LONG way toward solving the dilemma of buried mail and negligent or forgetful administrators. Not sure how it solves the long timing, however. Do you suggest that they send these notices out over the summer or move up the PSAT/NMSQT to June/July? The extra staff I referenced had little to do with “bulk mail” decisions and more to do with just being occupied with the prior contest and waiting on administrators to verify student contact information, class and citizenship status, and so forth. If they hire twice the staff they can cut the timing for the To-Do list in half, perhaps, but the extra salaries would eat a bit into scholarship money.
Students sit for the PSAT in October. Grades are available to NMS within 2 weeks. They can sort their spreadsheet to determine cutoffs, which should take - let’s say a day or 2. But lets give them 2 months to do this. Why can’t they make the cuttoffs/notifications available by January? I get that the nice people there are working on doing the previous year’s selections (reading essays, etc…) at that time (Jan/Feb) but the entire schedule makes no sense. They basically sit on the October results and don’t touch them until May of the following year since they are working on the previous year’s applicants. That’s why its so drawn out. Its not the time it takes to select, its the odd schedule.
“Why can’t they make the cuttoffs/notifications available by January?”
Don’t they need to verify the self-reported contact information, grade status and citizenship of the prospective SF’s first? How to do that by January? Perhaps they can do this beforehand to all 1.6 million takers; however, only the top 3% would need to have their information verified. Maybe they can have the families help on some of that (address, citizenship) but grade status still has to go through the schools.
“They basically sit on the October results and don’t touch them until May of the following year since they are working on the previous year’s applicants.”
They actually contact the schools in March or April, don’t they, in order to start the verification process for those who are “moving on” in the competition? NMSC releases the commended # to those who ask around the same time.
^^Also @suzyQ my son’s PSAT scores arrived on Dec. 11th last year so two months after taking the test. How do you know that NMSC has access to them sooner? Not sure why CB continues to delay the results of this one test when SAT results are available within three weeks now. It’s possible that they are running some statistical quality checks at that time? Or maybe they are eating bon-bons and waiting on NMSC to clear its own plate. Who really knows.
NMSC is pretty busy in the fall - as most who will be designated SF soon can appreciate! I agree that it takes about 2 seconds to sort a spreadsheet but I think even back in the olden times before computers, the sorting was the easy part of this entire process.
@JBStillFlying how do you know that counselors are contacted in the spring to start the verification process?
@homerdog a few reasons, one of them being that some schools have made public announcements about such! People have testified that they were called in to be told they are “moving on”. A friend of mine’s daughter was similarly informed in April a year ago and told to take the SAT (her SI was exactly the commended number so I really hope she didn’t do that unless she was planning to take the SAT anyway).
Edit - oops sorry I didn’t finishing answering the question - the administrators are contacted as laid out in the National Merit Student Guide:
“In April of 2018, NMSC will ask high school principals to identify any errors or changes in the reported eligibility of their high scorers (students whose scores qualify them for recognition).”
Something else: this is a contest for seniors, not juniors. and relies on grades through end of Junior year. Sure, they can do the initial cut sometime in the middle of your 3rd year of high school, but many are still going to be a year away from even having a clue who their “first choice college” is! I doubt it would work to shift the contest forward, even if all the above difficulties could be addressed. That leaves only shifting the PSAT timeline back to - what? End of junior year? Summer before senior year? Is that workable either?
To me, it would make sense that in March or April they would have not just the commended students announced, but the finalists based on the scores.
Does anyone know the cut offs for each state?