<p>"It may be that by not designating first choice college the student removes himself from early consideration for the 2500 NM awards"</p>
<p>Not in our experience. DD did not designate first-choice college. She was called by NMC in March(?) and asked to designate a college because she had been chosen for a scholarship - (the NMC person said that it was a "prestigious" award, and that DD could change her choice of college right up until summer or even later, I think, if she transferred. She said that NMC just had to have a college name to put down.) She got a $2500. NMC one, even though the college she chose offers college-sponsered NMS for any NMF who attends. </p>
<p>The other consideration for the $2500. scholarship, is that many schools will continue it at $2000. a year if they offer college-sponsered NMS themselves. So for those colleges you don't end on losing out by accepting the one-time NMC award.</p>
<p>You folks are all ignoring why the PSAT exists in the first place. The entire reason for the test is to produce a pre-screened mailing list which can be sold to colleges and universities for their marketing efforts.</p>
<p>Before any of the UCs get on their high horses maybe they ought to disclose what their marketing and recruitment casts are per year and per student enrolled. In fact come to think of it lets see what the entire admissions department costs each year and figure out how many scholarships for "deserving poor kids" we could pay for each year.</p>
<p>BTW what makes a poor kid more "deserving" than a rich kid or a middle class kid? Is bad luck somehow meritorious? Just a question. Don't flame me.</p>
<p>"BTW what makes a poor kid more "deserving" than a rich kid or a middle class kid? Is bad luck somehow meritorious? Just a question."</p>
<p>An interesting philosophical question. Here goes.</p>
<p>Traditionally, our american culture viewed education, including, to some degree, higher education, as a public good, where all of society benefits, not just the individual receiving the education. As a result, a philosophy arose that essentially believed that low income should not be a barrier to obtaining a college education. In fact, my generation did not have great barriers. It was possible to obtain an education at a high quality public university by living a spartan lifestyle and working hard during the summer and school year to earn/save money. The costs are so much greater now that most low income kids need financial aid in order to attend. Since funds are limited, many feel the poor should have first crack at those funds.</p>
<p>So, no, bad luck is not meritorious, but some feel financial aid should not be based on merit. Those folks think it a matter of fairness.</p>
<p>I like the PSAT comment, which closes the circle on NM. NM drives more kids to take the PSAT, which means a bigger mailing list of high quality prospects.</p>
<p>The biggest educational give away was the GI Bill. It made it possible for a whole generation of men of modest backgrounds to attend college and enabled the US to have one of the highest proportions of college-educated adults in the world. It was one of the most successful social engineering experiments.</p>
<p>"BTW what makes a poor kid more "deserving" than a rich kid or a middle class kid? Is bad luck somehow meritorious? Just a question. Don't flame me."</p>
<p>I promise not to flame. Actually, it's really simple. The PUBLIC benefit from the PUBLIC paying for the PUBLIC education at a PUBLIC institution of a low-income kid is much greater than that for doing the same for a middle-income kid (pretty simply because s/he is likely to get the PRIVATE educational benefit through other means, even if it is at a public institution..) The obvious public benefit lies in the differential afforded to low-income families in the long run through access to education, and hence increased workforce productivity, lower social welfare expenditures, etc. The less obvious but probably more important societal benefit in the long run is as a safety valve that other might not otherwise exist in a race-and-class-conscious (some might say "based") society.</p>
<p>It is in no way a question of "deserving". It doesn't even suggest that the private benefit to the low-income student is greater than that to the higher income one (it might or might not be the case.) It's not even a matter of "fairness" (I personally would like it to be, but it isn't), but one of public benefit.</p>
<p>Now, it could be argued differently for prestigious private institutions - not only can be, but admissions are already administered that way, with the odds of admission for a high-income student, with the same grades, SATs, etc., likely being 5-6 times greater than for a middle income one. (At most, there aren't enough low-income students to affect the equation.)</p>
<p>Back in the 1960's there was the NMSQT ( National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test ) that was taken in the Junior Year. It was more of an achievement test and contained subject matter, as opposed to the PSAT/SAT Aptitude tests.</p>
<p>Not that I would advocate another test again, but when and why did the PSAT take over from the NMSQT???</p>
<p>I believe the psat, sat and nm do serve a good purpose. That is a simple and rough way to screen out good students. That is not to say that there are not good students with a good chance of success that do not do as well on the standardized tests. There are many like that out there. </p>
<p>The colleges have everyright to ignore the sat and psat and use their own methods of admitting and granting scholarships. But for those large institutions that would like a means of raising the academic level of their schools by granting scholarships to nm scholars, it is excellent. I would hate to see it go away. </p>
<p>If colleges want to raise the academic level of their schools, I don't see why they could not give merit money to the students with the highest SATs + GPAs. PSATs are taken midway through a high school student's career, with nearly two more years to go. High PSATs are only indicative of the possibility of high SATs, after all.</p>
<p>"The PUBLIC benefit from the PUBLIC paying for the PUBLIC education at a PUBLIC institution of a low-income kid is much greater than that for doing the same for a middle-income kid"</p>
<p>The above is an assertion not easily proven. And in any event it says nothing about deserts even if I were to grant its truth.</p>
<p>I am not sure that a system that increasingly privileges the wealthy who can afford to pay and the poor who cannot at the expense and opportunity of the middle classes necessarily benefits the "Public", especially since it is the middle classe "Public" who does all the paying.</p>
<p>Not sure the GI Bill was as socially revolutionizing as all that but at least I wouldn't question a call on the public till for the benefit of those who sacrificed so much for the public good. They were deserving whether rich, poor, or somewhere in between.</p>
<p>mini is the utilitarian, newmassdad argues fairness, and marite observes the effects of the GI Bill which was not enacted for the benefit of the "deserving poor" but for the benefit of the "deserving veterans". Looks like nobody wants to argue that the poor are "deserving".</p>
<p>My parents both went to City College of New York - neither could have gone without the public subsidy. And I'll be the same is true, among our ancestors, for about 80% of us white folk. In those days, for my parents, the scholarships weren't necessary - the college was FREE. Paid for by all those nice wealthy taxpayers. FREE, as in ZERO. No partial scholarships, doled out to poor folks in little spoons. Free.</p>
<p>The GI bill was NOT a reward, and NOT a matter of desert - that was the political spin at the time. The problem was huge numbers of unemployed and uneducated men coming back from the war, and finding women (and, in the navy shipyards, and defense plants, African-American women) in all the available jobs (and doing rather well at them.) (Are you suggesting that all those women who picked up and moved thousands of miles away from their homes in order to produce the material that won the War were "undeserving"? I give you more credit than that.) Looking forward, the political implications of same was potentially catastrophic. Now, of course, in much of the country the GI bill didn't do much for African-Americans - Blacks were not permitted in any public universities in the south, and they weren't allowed to purchase homes under the GI bill in the new, highly segregated suburban tracts in the north. But putting that all aside - the reasoning was the same - the PUBLIC (but intangible) cost of not finding ways to adequately employ hundreds of thousands of trained white soldiers once they returned home would have been huge.</p>
<p>I don't understand where this "increasingly privileges" comes from. The wealthy are now paying taxes at the lowest rate in more than two generations. But the biggest PUBLIC benefit, as I noted, (and so here I agree with you) is indeed intangible</p>
<p>I really see no harm in the NMS program. It is very much like an athletic event. To win you must:
1. Pick your parents correctly.
2. Train a little bit (math especially)
3. Compete against people who didn't pick their parents correctly.
4. Have an especially good day.</p>
<p>Years ago I was a semifinalist who didn't make it to finalist because I was a slacker. That is what the gap between the SF designation and the Finalist is for. So that they can look and see if you actually are a scholar. My daughter on the other hand is actually a good student (GPA 3.97UW, >1500 SAT) and highy regarded by her teachers She can't run worth a darn and came in third from the last in Cross Country. Played all of ten minutes in a season of water polo. She was placed in the lower division of her high school choir. In drama she worked on the tech crew.</p>
<p>It is highly unlikely that she will receive any money from NMS, and if she did it would cover about 1 percent of her college cost. She will not receive need based aid. Yet her education will be a significant strain on her family (See "Going Broke by Degree" in the CC bookstore). If the posters on this thread want to take this little prize away from her, her equivalent of a letterman's sweater, all I can say is I think you're pretty sad.</p>
<p>You've missed the point Mardad. The people who run UC don't want to take your daughter's money away, they just don't want to pay for it out of taxpayer dollars. There's no point for them -- they already are filled to capacity with the top students coming out of California high schools. Your daughter's right to take her winnings doesn't translate into someone else's obligation to pay for it. After all, the people who run Harvard and Yale don't want to pay either.</p>
<p>If you happen to live in California, then your family already has the benefit of a state-subsidized education. I mean, Californians are getting a world class education for a tuition of approximately $5000 a year. That's less than I used to pay for day care for my kids when they were small. Sure, with room & board and incidentals added in, it's hard on families ..... and if private foundations and corporations want to fund scholarships on any standard whatsoever... fine. But UC is just thinking that its resources can be better spent. As a California taxpayer, I think that they are right - the dollars are needed elsewhere.</p>
<p>Mini! We have something in common! My mother went to City. In those days it was known as "the poor man's Harvard." I know now you are expecting Harvard to be the poor man's Harvard, but that's another thread. ;)</p>
<p>I think we need to separate here the different kinds of NM Scholars. Actually, it seems to me that if some private colleges want to engage the NMSC to give a test for them and evaluate some students so that they can give them money, fine. I am hearing about huge numbers of middle- and upper-middle-class kids in my area who are getting substantial merit money from second tier schools. This isn't the fault of the NMSC; it's what these schools are choosing to do. If the UC doesn't want to do that, makes perfect sense to me also. I just react badly to the possibility that they may once again be muscling ETS, as they did with the SAT.</p>
<p>As for the $2500 winners, when I was in school I am pretty sure that that was a four-year scholarship. So...they seem to have already reduced it. In light of the overall cost of college, it is basically an honor. Now, although I am happy to be $5,000 less in the hole, thanks to this scholarship, I'm figuring that NM Scholars would be pretty pleased to get, say, $1000 for the privilege of putting that prestigious designation on their college apps. Of course, the NMSC would have to process the whole thing a bit faster. </p>
<p>Why is nobody mad about the Robert Byrd Scholarships? D is getting $1500 a year for 4 years from that one, also merit-based. And that one is Federally funded.</p>
<p>UC can fuss all it wants to about the PSAT, but until they base all scholarships on need and eliminate all merit-based scholarships, including athletic scholarships, their statements are hollow.</p>
<p>" Looks like nobody wants to argue that the poor are "deserving"."</p>
<p>Patuxent, I don't know where you are trying to take your part of the discussion, but the idea of public benefit stemming from a college education (indeed, any education) is not one worth arguing over. You are welcome to think otherwise. Heck, you are welcome to think a poor person deserves being poor - maybe and act of g_d? If you disagree with current public policy, then get out and lobby, get out and vote. Push your position. Just don't ask me to agree.</p>
<p>But, Calmom, it seems to me that the UCs DO want to take the money away, based on the strident language from the committee. They could have just dropped out of the program relatively silently, like UC Berkeley did.<br>
And I agree with EllenF, their statements seem disingenuous given the amount of (merit-based) athletic scholarships they provide.
In the interest of full disclosure, I don't live in CA, and one of my twins (HS junior boys) will be a NMS semi-finalist/finalist.</p>
<p>I think we need to take a look at the pay structure at the UCs. If we eliminated merit based pay raises and only had need based pay raises we could save millions every year that then could go to need based scholarships. The median family income in the coutry is somewhere in the mid to low 40's if we frooze all pay raises for anybody making more than that then we could really save a bundle.</p>
<p>Patuxent, an award for scoring well on a test is NOT a "merit" based award. It might be called that, but it is simply a contest in which, for Californians, kids who get 216 points win and kids who get 215 points lose. The kid who gets 214 points on the PSAT and then several months later gets 1550 on the SAT is not less meritorious than the kid who gets 217 on the PSAT, followed up with a 1400 SAT. If the UCs want to give merit awards -- and they do -- they can use their existing structure to evaluate the whole package the student presents: high school grades, test scores, essays, other accomplishments.</p>
<p>Justadog, how would UC's nonparticipation take away money from your daughter at, say, USC or ASU? They are saying they don't want to participate in NM because it is a process which commits funds to a set of applicants pre-screened by an arbitrary and ethnically discriminatory instrument. They can use whatever language they want to justify their decision - it doesn't prevent the test from being given or other schools from participating. Sponsoring schools like the ones I mentioned above use their aid dollars to lure NM finalists away from the UC system -- and they are probably delighted if UC stops offering the award.</p>
<p>The UCs can do whatever they want with their money and define merit any way the desire or choose to ignore merit altogether if it suits their mission.</p>
<p>My only question is if all these tests are so bad and biased and serve only to re-enforce the squalid social system we have why do the UCs publish their students test scores? Or let us know how many merit Scholars they enroll? I think they shouldn't ask for the test scores. In fact I don't think they should ask for GPAs either since these are reflective of family wealth and the social and educational opportunities that come with privilege. </p>
<p>Afterall what is fair or indicative of merit in a high school chemistry test? Why does a 93 get you an A but a 92 get you a B? Everybody knows that on a different day or a different test or next year the same kid who got that B today could get a A.</p>