@Phlipper I from CA and UCF is my top choice!!
We are planning a trip to UCF later this month. D was just admitted to U Miami as well - no word on merit, but I’m wondering if we need to get over there as well on our trip. It would mean giving up our theme park day. :(( Has anyone heard anything lately about the Benacquisto funding?
@Kayak24, My D received the email on jan 31, 2018 indicating that the original AES/honors currently bestowed will be adjusted to reflect the national merit recognition as soon as they get confirmation from NM and that they would send another letter reflecting the changes.
Apologies in advance for what is likely a dumb question, but … I’m likely a NMF, with parents not at a sponsoring corporation and am SCEA admitted to an Ivy now listed as my first choice with NMSC. So I’m 50/50 for receiving a NM $2500 Scholarship on March 22, which would be mailed directly to my college without me having to do anything further, correct? Students not eligible for corporate-sponsored awards and who aren’t attending a sponsor college, need only to list their college as first choice and nothing more? Somewhere I read of a Yale student with a similar circumstance, and he/she was told that Yale would be happy to have the one-time $2500, but the thread has eluded me. Thank you!
I’m a NMF from Mississippi, and I’ll most likely be attending UCF in the fall.
UCF sounds really great…I would have liked to take S there for a visit but I just could not get him interested. Oklahoma State also looked interesting to me, but again no luck convincing S to take a look. He just really liked UTD, and once he got to stay on campus for coding camps he made it his final choice and never looked back.
@CGCC20 to best of my knowledge, yes you have 100% finished your part. My DS still in “undecided” but is planning to choose a first choice school later this month, and as far as I know that is the last “to do” item for us.
@CGCC20 – It’s not a dumb question, even for a future Ivy Leaguer :), but the answer requires a slightly deeper dive than you have undertaken. Yes, you are done if you are definitely going to your SCEA school, but your chances of getting the $2,500 are not 50/50. NMSC only grants 2,500 $2,500 awards, so your chances are 2,500/15,000, or 1/6. The other 5,000 scholarships they grant (to get to the 7500 total) are the corporate and school sponsored awards for which you will not be in the running. You can have a 100% chance at an award if you attend a sponsoring school and list it as your first choice! 
Hope this helps!
@CGCC20, your understanding of the process appears correct but your estimation of the odds is not quite right. Out of 15,000 finalists only 2500 are selected for the NMSC-sponsored $2500 scholarships, and those 2500 scholarships are carefully distributed around the country in the same way that NMSF are distributed. They do not just go the the top 2500 finalists; they’re allocated to each state according to its population of high school seniors. So for those awards you are competing against finalists from your state, and your chances depend on how competitive your state is.
You may have gotten the 50/50 odds from the overall number of scholars, but that number includes all the students who receive university- or corporation-sponsored National Merit awards.
For those interested in UCF, a parent from CC shared with me that her son is in CS at UCF and they recently beat MIT in a competition. 
For NM, UCF was definitely my D’s top choice (We’re from PA). She was accepted ED at another school but we still go back and forth wondering if she’s making a big mistake. So difficult to pass up that incredible free education. We loved our two visits to UCF, but in the end my D just felt being a plane ride away was just too far for her. 
If not for that, it would have been a done deal for her.
@Kayak24 The UCF programming team is one of the best in the country and routinely beats the ‘top’ schools in competitions. My son plans on CS and researched the team. It is a very big time commitment but you can pretty much write your own career path after the experience. My son so far has decided to play intramurals and go to UCF games and not commit to something like that at this point. The CS program at UCF is underrated for their undergraduate education IMO. GLTA.
Very helpful, thank you. I’d have felt bad leaving a form unfilled that would have potentially cost my college. As for percentages, I’ve already deleted my notes and don’t recall my exact thought process, but it was my understanding that the pool of NM $2500 Scholarship recipient candidates shrank as the corporate-sponsored recipients were awarded and thus removed. And that it shrank further as sponsor college applicants were ‘selected out’. So while someone might start out only eligible for one of three awards in the pool of 15,000, their odds increased as ‘CS’ and ‘SC’ students were taken out. I understand another variable is state allocation, as well as NMSC’s explanation that winners are “chosen on the strength of their credentials and potential for future success” - which seems to return a second round of subjectivity.
Am I right to assume that the semifinalists who have not received a letter up to this point is a finalist?
@CGCC20, NMSC states that all finalists are equally considered for the NMSC-sponsored awards, and if you read the NMSC annual report you can see that some winners of NMSC-sponsored scholarships actually do end up at universities that sponsor their own scholarships. Students only get one National Merit scholarship, but, for instance, there are students who win the NMSC award who end up at OU or UTD or UNM. So no, according to NMSC’s website you don’t have a higher chance of getting an NMSC award than, say, another finalist in your state who has UCF listed as first school choice or who has a parent who works for an NM sponsor company. You very well could end up with a scholarship from NMSC but it is far less than a 50/50 chance.
If you are at say OU or UTD or UNM and receive the 2500 scholarship I am assuming that you would not receive both the 2500 and the big school packages designated nmf. Anyone know?
The way it works at OU - you are told if you are offered the scholarship take it. The way OU’s scholarship is structured is that everyone is given the national merit scholarship. If you don’t get it from NM OU will make up the difference and it is paid to the student from the NM office not to the bussar’s office.
At UTD, if it is awarded, it’s treated like any other out side scholarship and doesn’t effect the schools NM scholarship offer.
@Mnacttutor, the “official” NM award from any school is small, usually in the $2000-$3000 range. The large NMF packages are added on top at some schools, and are accounted separately. So the UTD total package is nearly a full ride but the “official” NM portion is I think $2500. And some colleges, while not official sponsors of the NM program, nevertheless do offer scholarships for NMF.
Thank you, traveler98, this was the piece of info I was missing: " … some winners of NMSC-sponsored scholarships actually do end up at universities that sponsor their own scholarships."
My son is still very undecided but is considering whether he should put down a housing deposit at a school with limited on campus housing. To do this he also has to pay a commitment fee to the school basically saying he will attend the school. We are hearing that many do this just for to secure a spot in a dorm and forgo the fee if they end up elsewhere. My question is will this have any bearing on NMF if he currently has another school as his first choice? Will the National Merit folks be notified that he has committed to a school?
@avocadotoast We certainly hope so in our household 
I think if you haven’t received anything by now you can certainly feel confident there is something on the way to your principal this next week !