A lot of Texans in this thread! I’m a Texas SF as well.
It seems logical that news will first be heard from people in Illinois and the Midwest states around it. I believe it did happen that way last year. Any Midwest SF here?
Just D17 in MN. But she doesn’t have any C’s. She does have a B-, however, and it’s in a year-long class (not honors or AP). Not sure what the transcript shows but she was an A- at the end of first semester. . . . DON’T ASK :-??
Another Texan - Houston area - nothing in the mail yesterday. Phew. Another day down.
@nutmeg_shippy. I thought the same thing - like a blob of bad news creeping ever south and west… 
What a peculiar dread: looking for the thing i want not to exist. Anyway, southern Illinois and nothing today, fwiw.
All quiet on the eastern front. Postal carrier has come and gone. Seems as if today and tomorrow should be D-Day for most of the country, but maybe they use a slow, bulk-mail service? This is a slow torture, and the method unnecessarily archaic. Wanting envelope not to arrive is like trying to prove the null hypothesis. Absence proves nothing. Continued good luck to all…
Nothing received here in the Rocky Mtns (Idaho). I’d expect we’d start to hear reports in the Midwest either today or tomorrow. Like MatzoBall postulates, it could be bulk mail and a slower, lower priority distribution through the USPS.
So any guesses on what date we can breath a sigh of relief? Do you think by next Wednesday or Thursday, all the letters would have been delivered?
Two weeks is an outside limit for bulk mail unless a piece is lost, so if nothing bad arrives on or before Feb. 1, you should be safe. But chances are people will post rejections earlier, and if you haven’t heard by a couple of days after them and if you don’t live in a mail-challenged area, you are very likely safe. Winners are notified in Feb. Schools find out before letters arrive at home.
S17 got the dreaded letter today, not moving on to finalist due to his 2 C’s, no surprise there. We are in NJ by the way. Good luck everyone!
@lowrdmom sorry to hear that! Did the letter actually say that he was rejected due to the C’s or are you concluding that?
Very sorry to hear your news, @lowrdmom . It was really kind of you to post here so that others have a sense of the timeline for getting unwanted news.
The letter states “To advance to Finalist standing, a Semifinalist mush have a record of academic performance that is consistently very high in all grades 9 through 12 and in any college coursework taken. After careful evaluation of your coursework and grades, we have concluded that your academic record does not fulfill this Finalist requirement.” From grades 9-11 he always took all the honors classes that were offered as well as took 3 AP classes last year and did well, but received two final grade C+'s in two honor’s classes. He also has been working 25-30 hours per week since junior year. This year he is taking 5 AP classes and doing well, so I it seems it was the two C’s. From past year’s posts we expected he wouldn’t make finalist. Thankfully he has received two good scholarship offers so far from universities that do not offer any scholarships for NMF, so he at least has those to fall back on.
Good luck everyone!
@lowrdmom he sounds like a great young person who will do well despite this. I wish you both luck and thank you for your posts.
@lowrdmom Congratulations on the two good scholarship offers.
Hi, I was a NM semi for the class of 2016 (if you read threads from last year you can see how it went down). I had some Cs and I got a letter on January 19 of last year. It was painful but I knew in the back of my mind I was going to get the letter. It’s been a year and while a free ride to college would have been nice, I now understand the importance of grades through all years of high school and now am encouraging gifted kids matriculating to high school to be diligent in their schoolwork so that should they make NMSF they won’t lose the chance of tens of thousands of dollars a few years down the road. I’m just chiming in to say, the pain of rejection hurts at first, but eventually you heal as you settle into college.
Also, for those wondering how long it took for my letter to come, it was dated Jan 13, 2016, mailed from Chicago suburbs, and arrived Jan 19. I live in Florida.
Hopefully, like you Icgusa, my son learns from disappointment. Like all of the kids who make NMSF, he is very intelligent, but he does not study. He has been lucky that he was able to get great grades until those two last year. I told him he needed to buckle down and get at least B’s in those classes, but he didn’t put in the extra effort. He did lose out on a full tuition scholarship to one of the schools he applied to because of not making finalist, but he does have the other two schools’ full tuition scholarships. Now I just worry that he keeps up his grades for the rest of the year. I worry that if he starts getting too much senioritis that his grades will fall and I don’t know if schools take away scholarships because of lower grades the end of senior year.
BTW, my son’s letter was dated January 17, 2017.
May I ask whether that was the date on the postmark or on the letter itself?
@lowrdmom the senioritis is seriously kicking in.