Howdy. I have a National Merit semifinalist son (pending finalist and scholar) who has been accepted to TAMU Engineering (Gig 'em!). We are OOS. I believe that puts him in the pool for consideration for the Brown Foundation scholarship. Has anyone received any information yet?
Same here! My son got into Engineering and is National Merit. We’re hoping to hear something about Brown as well, but no word yet.
Same here as well (in-state though). I did see a person on Reddit last week say that they were invited for an interview this past weekend.
My son is also National Merit. He has a Brown Foundation interview this weekend.
All the best to your son.
Good luck to everyone. For those that did receive notification, what form was it in? My son is brilliant, but he is not too keen on checking all of his various school portals and email addresses.
The interview and presentation request was sent by email. They were nice enough send to my son and copy me, which was helpful to avoid the information getting lost. I think there were still more invitations to be sent out. Good luck.
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My daughter was also accepted to TAMU engineering (Auto admit) in September and she is a National Merit Semifinalist. We haven’t heard from Brown either. How many people do they invite and what is the criteria to be invited apart from being accepted into engineering and NMS? Can we call someone at TAMU to get any info on this? TIA
My understanding is that the scholarship dept sends over a list of potential candidates from the pool of incoming National Merit Semifinalists to Mr. Brown, and he/they decide who gets an interview. I asked the scholarship office a couple months ago and they told me that there is nothing you can do to get on either list, and if you don’t hear from them by early December, that means you did not get an interview.
This is something I found in a thread from earlier this year (Jan 2020).
So there’s a sliver of hope! 
@sapphire33 this is another post I found in the same thread posted on Jan 11th, 2020. There probably is a little hope. I really wish someone would help the kids if they have any questions. And the fact that people are working remotely due to COVID is not helping. My daughter sent emails and left voice messages, no response 
Based on reading here and on other sites, it does seem that there is some degree of rolling to the Brown Scholar process, but January is probably the tail end of the window. On a separate note, is anyone finding College Confidential a bit dead and unhelpful for this cycle? When my older daughter applied to college a couple of years ago, I got great and timely information from the give-and-take and lively discussions. This time it seems like the forums are not very active.
This is my first year on the forum so I don’t have anything to compare it to, but I found the TAMU Class of 2025 - Admission discussion and decisions thread very active and helpful, especially earlier in the fall when the first waves of decisions came out and when many of the competitive majors were hearing back (business, engineering, etc.). I think it’s slowed down since Thanksgiving, which seems normal. It may pick back up during the last phase of housing and for later events like NSC, Fish Camp, etc.
Hello all, my daughter is a Brown Scholar Class of 2023. I just responded to someone on the other thread and somehow stumbled on this one. Basically, if your student is offered the Brown Scholarship, TAKE IT!! Mr. Brown, Mrs. Matthews, the scholarship, stellar, outstanding, take it, take it! Who knows what the timeline looks like this year with Covid and now the Brockman scholarship being canned. Two years ago, Mr. Brown did all the interviews in person in Houston in December and early January. At our round of interviews (first Saturday in December), he told the group at large that they would know if they were getting the scholarship within a week. He also said he doesn’t have a set number to give out; it just depends on the year and the crop of talent he interviews. Best Wishes to all!
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@ChillyCow - DD is NMSF and hopefully NMF. TAMU website says she will get around 42K total scholarship. does the Brown Scholarship cover the cost of attendance or does it vary from student to student?
Any other students got interviews scheduled or results back for class of 2025.
@TxSenior I have my interview tomorrow! From what I know, they will be interviewing about 25 kids this week who were all at a virtual information session this morning. In the session they said they will be interviewing about 100 kids in total this year but I don’t know if they have already interviewed some people before this wave. According to Mr. Brown, the scholarship would cover the balance of your tuition for 4 years (so anything that isn’t already covered by another scholarship) but I have seen a few cases from previous years where students were offered free housing and/or meal plans as well. I would only bet on receiving full tuition though. I hope that helps a little! And I’d be more than happy to share any information I receive in my interview tomorrow!
Thank you! Good luck with the interview!
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@TxSenior and @kpfrazee, the National Merit status should get you free tuition----aka half a ride. The Brown scholarship should get your free room and board----aka half a ride. So put them together and you are a full ride. When you get the financials letter, it will look like it isn’t really a full ride though because of two things. A) The published University Cost of Attendance is overinflated. They allot for about $2500 for travel expenses. There is no way they will spend that much on travel. My daughter comes home like once or twice a semester. That is one tank of gas. Even if a kid FLIES home across country every month, they will not spend that much. Also, personal expenses are listed at $3500. Again, there is no way they will spend that much on personal expenses. Also, the housing and meal plan is listed at $11,400. Again, that is getting the largest meal plan which no one ever chooses. Books are listed at about $1200; again, not gonna cost that much. So, the Cost of Attendance is way overinflated. B) Brown scholars get random additional scholarships dropped in their laps in August/January. My daughter gets deposits to her account that she has no idea where they came from. $250 here and there from the scholarship office. Another thing I want to point out. Most Brown scholars are coming in with 30-60 credit hours. They are going to graduate in 2-3 years anyway. The scholarship covers 4 years so most of the kids end up doing an accelerated master’s while completing their undergrad and graduate in 4 years WITH a master’s, paid for as Brown Scholar. So, don’t worry about trying to add up the numbers to a tee. It is more than enough. Besides, you can’t put a dollar figure on the legacy of being a Brown Scholar. Once a Brown scholar, you have doors opened to you simply because you are a Brown Scholar. Think of the Aggie network but on steroids!!
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For anyone anxious about interviewing, the Brown family are the sweetest people I have ever met! They do seem to have already made up their mind by the time they interview as to who they will offer scholarships to. That is just the feeling that I got from talking to Mrs. Smith. In my hour-long interview, I was only asked a total of 3 or 4 questions before we launched into a discussion about Enmed so there’s no need to prepare much (again, just from my experience this morning). Of the people with interviews this week, we were told that we would hear back in the next two weeks but that the Brown Foundation Staff would make as many decisions as they could before Christmas. For anyone still waiting on news, don’t lose hope! Mrs. Smith informed me that everything has been super flexible with covid this year and that they will be assessing applicants with that understanding in mind!
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