Please remind me how the timing all works out on the selection of first choice school, and how that interacts with corporate and one-time scholarship opportunities.
The two schools my s19 has applied to that offer NM scholarships are Northeastern and RPI. Northeastern says “List as first choice by April 5 to receive updated scholarship by May 1; first group will be awarded in early March to EA applicants.” RPI doesn’t specify a date. My company also offers a small number of awards of 2K/year for 4 years. I believe that my son already listed Northeastern as his first choice, and he applied EA. I don’t want him to be awarded a Northeastern NMS before the one-time NM awards and the corporate awards are awarded, since those are more flexible, and my S is applying to many schools that don’t offer NM awards themselves, and the schools that give out larger awards will almost always still give the non-official part of their award, subtracting out what the student has been awarded from NMS another source (so they don’t lose out by getting awarded a different NM Scholarship first). Does he need to un-select Northeastern until those (corporate and one-time $2500) awards are given out, or are they awarded before that “early March” timeline so that it won’t matter?
I’m not sure I’m understanding exactly what you’re asking, but I’ll tell you what we did. We left the college choice as “undecided” until we knew for sure which school he’d be attending.
Your son can only receive one of the following sponsored scholarships: college, corporate, or NMSC $2500.
The college-sponsored scholarships are usually listed as such in the National Merit packages. If it’s unclear if any of the package is a sponsorship, you can email the college. Your student can receive the NM package + one sponsored scholarship, or if there is no NM package, then one sponsored scholarship.
Let’s say your son wins the NMSC $2500 sponsored scholarship AND is selected for your company’s sponsored scholarship. He will have to choose one in the NM online portal. Obviously, since your company award is higher, he would select the corporate award.
Below is the timeline:
March 6
NMSC begins mailing corporate-sponsored Merit Scholarship offers to winners at their home addresses
March 21
NMSC mails offers of National Merit $2500 Scholarships
May 1
NMSC begins mailing offers of college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards
May 31
Deadline for NMSC to receive reports of college choice for identifying the final group of candidates for college sponsored Merit Scholarship awards
I guess my question really is, if my son is offered a scholarship by Northeastern in early March, does that take him out of the running for the corporate or $2500 scholarships? Or would he potentially be offered different ones and choose the one that is best for him?
It does not take him out of the running for the corporate or NM scholarships. He will be allowed to select the one he wants. My son had a choice between the college-sponsored or the NM-sponsored awards and accepted the larger one in his NM portal.
I would still suggest he changes his college choice to “undecided” for the reason below:
Thanks for the reassurance about being able to be awarded both college-sponsored and NM-sponsored awards. My son may not know where he is attending by April 4 (when Northeastern requires students to list them as first choice) but hopefully he will at least have a very good idea which of Northeastern or RPI he prefers.
@mathmomvt I spoke with National Merit today regarding a similar question. They told me the $2500 and corporate scholarships are awarded first. Starting March 1, schools that sponsor scholarships will be notified of the finalists who identify them as #1. The schools will also be notified if the finalist was offered a $2500 or corporate scholarship. The school is still able to award a scholarship, but National Merit will not administer the scholarship if the student has accepted either of the other two - it will be administered by the school. This is our first time through this process, so I don’t have past experience to share. That’s good info to hear from @chercheur that a student will have choices! On Facebook a lady recently posted saying that accepting the $2500 scholarship almost prevented her child from being able to accept a more lucrative scholarship from a school as the school wouldn’t honor both. Her child ended up not accepting the $2500 NM scholarship. She did not identify the school, but National Merit led me to believe that this is the school’s choice to not honor both.
@SpaghettiMom most schools that offer big NM scholarships offer an “official part” and an “unofficial part” – the official part IIRC is at most 2K/year. So the schools offering full tuition for 4 years – that’s mostly “unofficial” – you can’t have 2 official NM scholarships, and I don’t know if you accept the $2500 if you lose eligibility for something better like 2K/year from another school. But you should never lose eligibility for the unofficial part, which is where the big money is for NMFs.
Does anyone know if you should update all your colleges with NMF status? I know only one NM school will officially give you the full ride when you designate them as your first choice May 1, but what about non NM schools that we applied RD and won’t hear from for another month?
@momcatof4 Students can always update admissions of big achievements/awards via email. My DD assumes her RD school will assume she made NMF since most do, so she does not plan on contacting them. If she had something else to add (a big award/honor), she would probably email.
Good luck to your son!