Sorry very long confirmation on timing needed

Paying for College National Merit Aid
1

<p>My son is a NMF and I need to clarify the timing and process for accepting or not accepting scholarships. Since this is potentially a lot of money, we need to make sure we are interpreting this correctly, so please help me out if you are sure of how this works.</p>

<p>I read that you should remain undecided in your college until you are sure where you want to go. If not, you are at risk if you put down a college and they offer you a NM scholarship and then you change your mind. At that point, you won’t be eligible for a different school’s NM scholarship. Will there ever be a case where NMSC will send out a college sponsored offer before May 1st? I assume this is only irrevocable once the NMSC notifies the student, and is not an issue if the college notifies him before May 1. See notes below:</p>

<p>"If NMSC receives notification of a change in college choice from a Finalist after
mailing a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offer to that student, the Finalist cannot be
offered another college-sponsored Merit Scholarship award. This applies even if the new
choice of college is one that also sponsors Merit Scholarship awards. Therefore, a Finalist
who has previously reported a sponsor college as first choice but is uncertain about it may
choose to notify NMSC that he/she is now “undecided”; such notification must be submitted
online at osa.nationalmerit.org before May 1. The Finalist can subsequently report a firm
college choice that NMSC receives by May 31."</p>

<p>I also read that you should be careful about accepting the $2500 NM Scholarship if you think the scholarship your college might offer you is more than that because you can only get one. See below:</p>

<p>"Consideration for a college-sponsored Merit Scholarship award is limited to Semifinalists who qualify as Finalists and who also
3. have not been offered any other National Merit Scholarship (corporate-sponsored, National, or another college-sponsored award). No student will receive more than one scholarship offer from NMSC."</p>

<p>To be very specific, my son has been accepted into Northeastern and will be offered a $30K award as soon as he designates them. He is waiting to hear from USC, which would offer him a ½ tuition scholarship upon designation and he has a handful of other colleges that offer $1000-$3000 (like Claremont and Santa Clara) per year for NM students.</p>

<p>To be very specific, I want to confirm two things:
1) If he were to designate Northeastern now and they offered him $30K, and he changed his mind between now and May 1st he would still be ok? </p>

<p>2) If he were to get offered a NM Scholarship (the $2500) he needs to decline it if he is going to one of these schools that offer money to NM students? If they are sending them on March 27th, when does he have to decline? There is still a chance he will choose another school that has no NM money. </p>

<p>Thank you for your help.</p>

2

<p>The large scholarships from USC and Northeastern are not official NMSC scholarships. They have their own deadlines. NE deadline is April 11th, and USC’s may be even earlier.</p>

<p>You can only win one official NMSC scholarship, but the official college-sponsored scholarships are smaller awards of $500-$2000 per year. You can’t turn down the $2500 NMSC scholarship if you win it, but some colleges will make up the difference between that and their college-sponsored award.</p>

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<p>Thank you. So if it is NE or USC, they could potentially get the $2500 in addition to their bigger scholarships. But you said, “some” colleges will make up the difference. But if a kid was offered $3000 per year ($12000), they might actually lose money by winning the NMSC award? Do colleges ever NOT make up the difference? That would really be an awful thing for a student (and their parents). </p>

<p>How would you know if a scholarship on a school website that is listed as National Merit is considered “official” or not? </p>

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<p>Yes, some colleges do not make up the difference. As stated already, official college-sponsored awards are $500-$2000/year, so your example would not happen. A student could miss out on a $2000/year award and end up losing on $5,500, however.</p>

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<p>If the award is $500-$2000/year, it is very probably an official college-sponsored award. Checking with the school would be the best method to determine whether or not an award is official.</p>

5

<p>I would check directly with the colleges. My understanding is that they must decline the $2500 from NMS if they are accepting a larger college NMF award. One thing I have learned so far is that everything is negotiable. If they want your kid to attend, they will find the money. </p>

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<p>Where did you hear this?</p>

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<p>I saw it on multiple college websites when researching NM scholarships at various colleges. It is a rule of the colleges, not of NM.</p>

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<p>Can you cite the colleges please? Because I’ve never heard of a college with this policy.</p>

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<p>We have a database of over 200 undergraduate colleges we created by searching their websites. Not a factor we recorded, I just remember seeing it many times and I wondered what happened if and when a NMS said ‘no thanks’ due to a better offer by accepting the money through the school. I can give you the whole list if you want to go through their websites to look for them.</p>

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<p>I think you are confused. A student is eligible to receive only one official NMSC scholarship. If a student is awarded a $2500 scholarship and declines it, he will not receive any NMSC scholarship. I have never seen a college that requires declining NMSC $2500 scholarship to receive an unofficial college scholarship. I have seen many colleges that have the opposite policy, that expect the student to accept the $2500 scholarship and then augment with additional college scholarship funds. A couple of examples are Washington University - St. Louis and Oklahoma State. </p>

<p><a href=“http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Financial-Aid/Pages/Financial-Aid-FAQs.aspx”>http://admissions.wustl.edu/scholarships-financial-aid/Financial-Aid/Pages/Financial-Aid-FAQs.aspx&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p><a href=“https://financialaid.okstate.edu/PDF/national-merit-nonresident-12-13.pdf”>https://financialaid.okstate.edu/PDF/national-merit-nonresident-12-13.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>Do you have examples of colleges following the opposite policy that you described?</p>

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<p>OU does not require students to turn down a NMSC scholarship. If a student isn’t awarded one, OU will award one as part of the package, but if a student is awarded one, OU does not give them the $2500. At least that was the case last year when my son accepted OU’s offer. </p>

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<p>So I think I understand the “official v. unofficial” part now. Now help me be sure on the timing. </p>

<p>If he puts in a school as first choice today, when will the schools send him his offer? I thought it said nothing would be sent out until May 1st, so he can change it by that date and still take a different school’s offer. (ie, can put Santa clara next week, and then change to Claremont the week after and then on April 30th change to USC). Correct? </p>

<p>the reason for my latest confusion is that I called 2 schools today to find out their deadlines. USC told me that I could wait until May and they will be ok (they are “unofficial”). Then I called Santa Clara. They told me they only offer it to 4 students and that they would begin selecting them next week. they don’t even know that my son is in the running yet. I’m guessing it will be first come first serve (at least that’s what the very confused man I talked to implied). But I thought I could keep changing my mind until May 1st. How would they be able to offer me a scholarship next week? (theirs is 2K). If that is true, then I couldn’t switch to another “official scholarship”. So sorry, but this is really much more difficult than it should be and it is worth a lot of money. Help!!</p>

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<p>@bsmom123 Short answer: Yes, your second paragraph is correct as far as NMSC is concerned. The only danger would be if those other schools also decide on a first come, first serve basis (USC guarantees their Presidential scholarship for every NMF that is accepted to USC, as long as they applied by the priority deadline.).</p>

<p>Explanation:
Apparently Santa Clara requires you to be in an early pool of “first choice” applicants but I could not find this requirement anywhere on their website. A few schools do this because their National Merit scholarship is competitive so they want to be able to make decisions and notify students by the time RD acceptances start rolling out. Or maybe because it really is first come, first serve as you suspect. Regardless, the official NMSC college-sponsored scholarship offers do not get mailed to students until May 1st or after (they come directly from NMSC, not the school). Therefore, you can be in the early pool for a school that requires it, but then if you later (before May 1) decide to attend a different school, you can still change your “first choice” with NMSC and be in the running for the other school’s official NMSC scholarship (as long as the latter does not also have a requirement to be in an earlier pool or run out because they are also first come, first serve.)</p>

<p>So Santa Clara may make a decision on their own National Merit scholarship now, but it won’t be an official award offer from NMSC until May 1st or later and up until then it does not preclude you from changing to a different first choice to get an different unofficial offer of that school’s scholarship. The one official offer you will get from NMSC is the one for the school listed as first choice on May 1st.</p>

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<p>Silly follow up question, but is there any requirement that prevents you from changing your school choice several times? could we put in Santa Clara, then change it to Northeastern for the April 11th deadline and then change it back to Santa Clara if that is ultimately where he chooses to go? He just doesn’t know because he hasn’t received his RD decisions yet and doesn’t know other scholarship options to compare. </p>

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<p>From what I understand, @bsmom123, you are free to change it as often as wish within the allotted time frame. I do not believe there are any requirements about the changes, at least from NMSC. You’d really want to check with the schools to see what their requirements are. For example, if NMSC mails out to colleges who have been named first choice at the beginning of March and again at the end of March, will Santa Clara officials notice (or care) that your son had them listed at the beginning of March but not at the end of March? I suspect if you call their scholarship representatives, they will help you determine the best course of action. Good luck!</p>