@Barfly, thanks for clarifying. If I understand correctly, once the student knows which college he/she plans to attend, this college should be listed with NMSC as “first choice,” regardless of whether the college offers any NMF scholarship, because otherwise the student cannot receive a $2,500 NMSC award (if selected) or a corporate award (not relevant in my son’s case). Is that right?
No, no reason to decline naming a first choice school. I was thinking that in my son’s case it might make sense to name his “real” second choice as first choice with NMSC if his actual first choice doesn’t offer a NMF award–that way if he changed his mind and opted for his second choice school, he could get that school’s NMF award. But it sounds like that’s a bad idea because if he got a NMSC $2,500 award he would only be able to use it at the school he lists as first choice with NMSC.
His situation is complicated by the fact that his true first choice school has a March 15 deadline for naming the school as first choice with NMSC, and he wouldn’t yet know about a NMSC award. Also, he recently interviewed for a full-ride scholarship (not related to NMF) at the “true” first choice school and would not be eligible for their NMF award if he’s a lucky winner (fair enough).
Bottom line, we need to decide by March 15 which school to list as first choice with NMSC. It’s looking like he should list his true first choice as that’s where he’ll probably go. If he should be so lucky as to get the full-ride scholarship to this school, then hooray! If not, he has a good chance of getting their NMF award, and possibly a NMSC award. The other schools will be off the table then.
Does this sound like a rationale plan? Thanks so much for your help!
@Putterer, Wow! Exciting to be in the running for a full ride at his first choice school! Congrats and good luck! Added confusion that the fist choice school has a March 15 deadline. I’m a little confused that the first choice school has a March 15 deadline to name them with NMSC if they don’t offer a NMF award. Did I mix up the schools?
As @STEMFamily pointed out, you can change your first choice up until the May 1 deadline. I have heard of schools with earlier deadlines giving an extension to some NMFs, so maybe that is a possibility.
We have it easy with my son’s situation. He has it narrowed down to 2 schools that both offer nice NM packages, and has already received enough additional scholarships from his likely first choice school to have a full ride. He’s just trying to fit in a visit to his likely second choice school prior to the deadline for the application for a big additional scholarship there. No need writing that dreaded essay if he’s not planning to go there. But if he doesn’t make up his mind before the deadline for that scholarship, he’ll be writing!
@Barfly, Thanks for the good wishes and congratulations to your son on his full-ride to his likely first choice.
First choice school does offer a NMF award but son would be ineligible if he got their full-ride scholarship. I thought it might be advantageous to list the next (NMF awarding) school on his list as first choice in the event son learned by March 15 that he was awarded the full-ride, so he would still have option to attend the runner-up school (and receive its large NMF scholarship) if he changed his mind about the current #1 school.
I’m going to call the leading school and see if the March 15 deadline can be extended.
@Putterer, you have a unique situation on your hands! I think many schools will still give the NMFs at least the small “official” NM award, even if the student has been awarded a separate full-ride scholarship. The reason for this is because unless a student receives an official NM scholarship (either from NMSC, a corporation, or a sponsoring school), the student is not a National Merit Scholar. The student is a permanent National Merit Finalist. Schools like to brag about how many National Merit Scholars they have, so they make sure each NMF gets the official school award unless the student has already received the official award from NMSC or a corporate source.
Update: I just called DS’s #1 school and was told the deadline for naming school first choice with NMSC is actually April 1, buying us 2 more weeks! (I got the initial March 15 deadline last week from another admissions rep, who even confirmed this date when I questioned it; the rep today did seem much more knowledgeable. A little scary for others seeking this vital info, none of which is available on school’s website.) That extra time could be very helpful to DS in making the big decision. Was also told again that with full ride he could not get their NMF award–only $1K/year for 4 years, but still! Thanks for your explanation of why they might award him a little something for NMF anyway. Honestly, my son would be over the moon if he got “just” the full-ride. @Barfly, thanks again to you and the all the posters on this thread for your help.
@Putterer The decisions for the $2500 awards are made completely independently of the student’s First Choice and are awarded before any the college-sponsored scholarships. The awards of the NMSC college-sponsored part of the college scholarships packages are not made until starting May 1st. The student has no control over getting a $2500 award or not. What your son puts down for First Choice has absolutely no bearing on whether he would get one of the $2500 awards. And the $2500 will be sent in your name to whatever school you have listed on May 31st regardless of what you had listed as First Choice at any point before that.
On the other hand, since NMSC itself selects the corporate winners based on information from the corporations, there has been speculation that they would offer the student either the $2500 or the corporate scholarship, whichever is the best deal for the student. But again, this is completely out of the control of the student and neither is dependent on what the student’s First choice is at the time.
Also, I think it is an NMSC rule that any official NMSC scholarship must go to educational expenses. So it makes sense that a student would not be allowed to stack an NMSC scholarship on top of a full ride scholarship.
So @Putterer, isn’t the $1k per year the “official” NM award I was talking about? Schools usually have the “official” NM award, then a package that is only available to NMFs but is not the official NM award. This has led to much confusion on CC. The only “official” NM awards, and the awards that make a student a National Merit Scholar rather than a National Merit Finalist is the small official award from NMSC, a corp or a sponsoring university. So your son gets the $1k per year and that’s his official NM award. To get that, he has to notify NMSC of his first choice college by the deadline. Then the school may independently decide to give him either the regular NM package or this other scholarship. Sweet! The point I was making was that they would probably give him the little official award so they have bragging rights to him as a National Merit Scholar.
@STEMFamily, thanks for the clarification on the $2,500 NMSC award.
@Barfly, yes, the $1K/year is the official NM award for DS’s first choice school. There’s no “unofficial” NM award or package at this school, just the $1K (awarded to only 3 students). This school offers no other NMF award of any kind. The full-tuition scholarship he was offered at this school and the full-ride he’s hoping to get are open to all, whether NMF or not. My apologies for not explaining our situation clearly–writing it out multiple times has helped me to understand it better, though! Yes, I understand that by awarding even a tiny official NM scholarship, the school would have NM Scholar bragging rights. But if they say they won’t add their NM scholarship to a full-ride, then I would tend to believe them. They could just substitute part of his full-ride with an official NM Scholarship, reducing his full-ride accordingly, and claim a NM Scholar! Believe me, if he gets a full-ride, we’ll be OK with forgoing the NM Scholar status.
@ruar12 quoted this from the back of NMF Finalist letter:
The confusion arises because this is taking things out of context. This portion is a SUB-paragraph. The entire paragraph is
My point is that this subparagraph is only relevant to the May 1st date that NMSC starts mailing offers of college-sponsored awards. Nothing is official on these awards until that date so the rule of only being offered one college-sponsored award does not apply until those offers are mailed. You can change your First Choice anytime at will to any college, whether or not they are a NMSC sponsor, before that May 1st deadline with no affect on an award. You just want to make sure that your final first choice is the only school ever listed in the month of May. And all the corporate and $2500 awards are offered before this so any student getting one of those is automatically not eligible for any college-sponsored award. (And as @barfly mentioned, this refers only to the portion of a college scholarship package that the school sponsors through NMSC)
I wonder, could NMSC make this just a tad more confusing? We’d all appreciate that!
agreed! @Barfly
@STEMfamily I think I am just beating this horse to death. NMSC could definitely do a better job in explaining the details, IMO.
What I asked about becomes clearer if we take a concrete example.
Student names, say BU, as a top choice and gets the college-sponsored award. On May 1, NMSC mails the student about this BU’s award. On May 5, student changes the top choice to say Stanford( which cares 2 hoots about NMSC 
). The student knows this, and doesn’t care as well-Stanford is important, not any college-sponsored NMSC award. In this scenario, the above paragraph holds no meaning -both the student and Stanford dont really care about any rules of NMSC re’ college-sponsored NMSC award.
However, say on May 5 the student changes the top choice to UChicago, which does offer college-sponsored NMSC award. In this scenario, the above para does apply. The student cannot be offered any NMSC award by UChicago because s/he was past the deadline of May 1. The rules prevent it. In this case the student has lost out on a possible NMSC award from UChicago just because of this delay.
It is here the statement “This applies even if the new choice of college is one that offers …” is superfluous. This statement is irrelevant in the above example with Stanford. Instead, the statement could read “This applies only when the new choice of college is one that offers…”.
Well, I think this is just a pedantic exercise.
@ruar12, I’m not sure where you are in this process of trying to understand the NM process, but I assure you we have all beat that poor horse to death over the years. This is round 3 for me. Still confused.
@ruar12 I agree with everything you said in post #51 and I much prefer your suggested wording. I mainly wanted other people who may read this board to understand the context of the May 1st date and your example is great. I will add one other scenario for people reading this that could have avoided losing the UChicago scholarship in your example.
This assumes that neither school requires a First Choice designation by May 1st, a requirement that several schools do impose.
Student is not 100% sure of BU on April 29th but is still considering UChicago, even only as a remote possibility. Student changes First Choice to “undecided” by April 29th. Now no letter is generated until student changes First Choice back to one of these schools and there is no danger in the meantime of getting a college-sponsored offer to the school that will not be the final First Choice. The student does have to designate one of them by May 31st.
I also agree with @Barfly as this is our 2nd time through this as well.
@STEMFamily agree with your scenario, too. Hopefully, folks can understand the ramifications of these deadlines and top choice, and do the right thing for themselves.
@barfly This is my first time, and so you can see I have been over board in pitching in :-). I blame it on my DD2 who made me look into this by becoming an NMF. DD1 was less stressful in that sense 
But now that everything is as clear as mud to me, I will take a break.
I’ve been trying to read through this thread and understand the previous answers, but it might be easier if I ask my own questions. Right now my DD has listed her 3rd choice school as her “first choice” because that school offers $4000 to NMF. Her top two choices do not participate in NM. She has not been admitted yet to any of the schools. The part that concerns me is whether listing #3 as her first choice now will preclude her from getting the $2500 that could be used at #1 or #2 if she gets into those. Should she change to Undecided this week?
This section from NMSC is what makes me think March 1 is an important deadline, even though the college-sponsored letters don’t go out until May 1st:
“March 1 through May 31, 2015: A Finalist who has reported a sponsor college as first choice by
March 1 will be included in the first group referred to that institution for scholarship consideration.
Periodically NMSC will notify sponsors of additional Finalists who have reported (by May 31) the college
or university as their first choice.”
Does she really have until May 1st to clarify her 1st choice? And will #3 look more kindly on her if she keeps them as her “1st Choice” until sometime in April (after she has heard about admissions)? Is there a downside of switching to “Undecided” after naming a school as 1st choice (before admissions offers are sent)? I realize that NMSC starts mailing out their $2500 offers on March 26. Thanks!
The NMSC $2500 results are live on your account.