Received letter in Missouri ahead of school.
Letter received yesterday in Houston suburb. In a funny coincidence, also in the mail yesterday was NMF marketing from UTD. It was a large envelope so it didn’t show up on informed delivery, and contained a nice letter describing the NMF package as well as a fancy faux award certificate. It was mailed bulk delivery and dated January 26, so of course just marketing and not any actual scholarship offer. I thought it was funny though, because the real NMF letter is just plain and because S hasn’t received his real NMF certificate yet. But S had one faux certificate to look at anyway. :))
What is Delivery Digest?
likely you mean informed delivery- you can sign up with the US Post office and they will email you scans of letters that are being delivered to your house that day- not all areas are supported at the moment, and it only sends scans of letters which go through the automatic sorter so only regular size letters
Despite Informed Delivery saying we had no mail at all we had a big stack of mail. And at the very bottom was The Letter! Son was named an NMF despite being the most bubbly of on the bubble kids. So relieved!
For future Bubble Kids and Parents - my son had 3 (yes that is THREE) C’s freshman year. 1 first semester and 2 second semester (in English and Bio) so for English he had a C all year. The only A’s he had that year were in band and PE. The rest were B’s. His grades went up after that but he still had plenty of B’s. At least one each semester. The first time he got all A’s was this past fall semester senior year. I was absolutely convinced his grades were in no way good enough for to make Finalist. When we didn’t get the rejection letter I thought for sure it was just lost in the mail. So do not lose hope oh ye future students with C’s! Now I am off to spend the rest of the day smiling.
Great news @Emory85!
@Emory85 Congrats on your S making to NM Finalist.
I know it’s none of my business but your post got me thinking. Does grades matters to applying to colleges and other scholarships.
Good Luck,
@emory85 Congrats! I got on here specifically to see if you had heard. Getting our letter yesterday was the best news!!!
For future bubble kids and parents, my son had a C+ for a semester for AP Lang & Comp last semester of Junior year and has had some B’s and B+'s scattered throughout Sophomore, Junior and Senior years. He is not overly involved in EC’s other than soccer. He had excellent recommendations and wrote a pretty killer personal essay. His weighted GPA is around 4.3. Not sure about unweighted. He started dual enrollment with local state university second half of Junior year to access math classes after he exhausted every one our school system had to offer. He has taken advantage of a lot of AP classes and I think showed he was taking advantage of educational opportunities. He was exactly on the cutoff score for the PSAT for our state, but got a 1550 750/800 on the SAT. I was very scared after reading all the entries on this forum.
@texaggie Each college recalculates the GPA according to their own formula. I had him contact all the schools he applied to and ask what his GPA was under their formula because I was worried. They have ranged from 3.4 to 3.9 so a very wide range. (2 colleges had him at 3.9 which I can’t understand at all but I wasn’t about to argue!)
S has been accepted to all colleges he applied to so far (still waiting on 2) with Merit $$. He also had a 35 ACT score which helped immensely I believe. Many of those awards will now increase with the NMF designation. Most merit money seems to start with a 3.5 GPA. He did not apply to any highly selective schools but a range of big state schools and some privates where he would be in the top 25 % of applicants.
My S had only 1 AP through Junior year. He is taking 3 now so 4 total. His school would not allow him to take any AP classes Sophomore year due to his Freshman year C’s. And he too had exactly the PSAT cutoff score for our state. It’s been quite a ride.
So, I do wonder about the reports of kids getting dinged over 1 C in past years. Maybe there were disciplinary issues or something else going on?
@Emory85 thanks, good to know.
Let me sum up for my D23 chances for higher learning with full or almost full scholarships for next year.
*NM Finalist (hopeful, base on current NMSQ score)
*AP Classes - checked
*GPA above 3.5 - 2.5 years checked
*High SAT scores - checked
*and some EC. - semi CK
Larger scholarships from state universities and some private and maybe not the elite schools.
Verified what I hoped, am I missing anything?
@emory85 I would guess it also depends if they live in a state with a high number of NMSF that they are competing with.
@ccsouth Each state has the same percentage of NMSF.
DD had already been notified by her principal but Informed Delivery shows a letter from NMSC today ! Excited to start the next steps. UCF sent an invite to their NMF dinner on March 23rd. My Daughter is already special but next year she’s going to be Golden …A Golden Knight that is ! 
Congrats to everyone FINALLY getting the definitive confirmation on NMF status.
If only my D18 had chosen a school that cares about NMF status. :)) :((
@texaggie, if you are looking for very big merit awards (full tuition or full ride) “above 3.5 GPA” will cut it only if it’s well above in most circumstances.
lol- yes we were surprised at how few of the more selective schools care (or rather just take it for granted that their student body are at the NMF level)- a few do provide some money for NMF, but overall it seems the more selective, the less they give for NMF (or even acknowledge NMF status) or AP credits they take- as one of the elites told us- if we took AP credit all of you in this room would be starting as sophomores
@amominaz I thought they did? (Pretty sure there is some money coming your way–5k?. Sure, not full ride, but every penny counts in my book).
argh, still no nmsc mail according to informed delivery. what’s wrong. D has 3.9/4.4 gpa and 1550 SAT.
can she be rejected for other reasons?
@caleegalee, we haven’t received our daughter’s letter yet either, but her principal has. The chance of a rejection letter being lost is extremely minute, so don’t worry.
As far as the mythical C knocking out kids on a regular basis, it seems very clear that’s far from the truth, and I hope the anecdotes from parents this year will ease some of the worry for parents in coming years. That includes students in states with a high cutoff and large number of NMSFs. We’re from California, and a single C didn’t eliminate my daughter (for reference, see post #125). There’s no indication that NM attempts to make the number of finalists proportionate to individual states as it does for SF.
As happy as all this news is, I too can’t stop thinking about the girl who was a NMSF in Florida, and who presumably would have been named a finalist this week. All her hopes and dreams gone… as well as those of the other kids killed. Devastating, and for me at least, helps me keep things in perspective.