Our experience; S did not receive an email. Checked the Coalition App, found the invitation by hitting the “Checklist” button under colleges.
same here
Yeah the invitation is kinda hidden in there. The little question mark next to the Banneker/Key header in the Checklist takes you to the interview sign up form.
I got B/K interview! I had no idea it was coming out today so definitely a great surprise!
I got the email below from UMD but no special packet arrived by mail.
Did anybody received the packet?
Greetings from Maryland!
By now, you should have received a special packet in the mail providing instructions on how to accept your invitation to interview on campus for our most prestigious scholarship. This recognition reflects your significant academic leadership and accomplishments—congratulations!
If for some reason you have not received a packet, please refer to your MyCoalition Checklist for more information.
We look forward to welcoming you to campus!
Sincerely,
Enrollment Management
So are we assuming anyone being considered would have been told by now or do they usually take a few days to tell everyone? Congrats to everyone who got semifinalist!
did you look at coalition check list?
My S19 received the invite via email on Thursday and Friday the letter came in the mail. This was not even on our radar! Very proud and happy for him. Congrats to all who got it!
can anyone tell me about what grades & Sats’s where needed for this award?
we were lead to believe my son was possiably eligible.
@lovemycats This is not a directly stats related award. Although in some senses it is indirectly related as only students admitted to the honors college are eligible to be considered of this award. Aside from this specific criteria, that a student be admitted to the honors college, I have seen no other out right academic eligibility criteria posted for this award,
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my son has been admitted to the honors college. Do you have any idea what they look for? We are OOS,
(from NY). As of know all the other OOS schools have offered a minium of $15,000. Was hoping Masyland would
be about the same. If not BK I believe the top is $12,500. Was leaning toward maryland chichis why I ask.
Is there anybody who knows if all the invitation has sent out for now? My son was admitted to honors college with engineering. He has good stats. It’s so disappointing not to be invited.
Only about 400 Admitted Honors College students are invited to interview for the B/K and only about 250 get the full ride. Those are long odds.
@mhyoon I would assume all invites have been sent out. While I can understand your disappointment, have you read all the threads from folks who are disappointed their student didn’t get invited to the Honors College and thought their student had sufficient stats to be invited? So it can be difficult for them to commiserate with folks whose students did get invited to the Honors College but didn’t get a B/K invite.
As @SoofDad has noted, the odds of getting a B/K invite are long. My daughter had 1550 SAT, 4.98 W GPA/4.0 UW GPA, All honors and 6 AP classes, 4-5 on all AP tests and she was not invited for B/K but she did get the second highest value of Presidential Scholarship (although to be honest, that was a pleasant surprise and not something we expected).
There is no black and white formula for who gets invited to Honors College and of those students who gets invited for B/K or who gets a larger Presidential Scholarship. Unfortunately you are at the mercy of the admissions committee to determine who they feel warrants those awards.
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Just an additional note on Scholarships. My D was admitted to the Honors College (several years ago) and did not get any Merit money. We personally know 2 students who got the full B/K (not this year). Both were admitted to Ivy’s. One went to UMD, one went to the Ivy.
When will notifications for President’s scholarships most likely come out?
Last year President’s and Dean’s scholarships came out around 2/28.
To pile on to what @adlgel said, I wanted to add a bit of insight into B/K from last year… I know several recipients - most of the ones I know had solid grades from competitive high schools with rigorous curriculum where they maxed out on the hard classes - also fantastic SAT/ACT - some were near or at perfect. All had some sort of EC but not everyone had an internship or a leadership position - one just had great test scores and played a sport… Then there was the kid that was one of the highest ranked in their class who worked part time in a normal high school job (restaurant, store, etc) -they didn’t have the ACT/SAT test scores the other kids had (south of 1400) but was the first in the family to attend college. My point? I am now convinced UMd doesn’t just pay lip service to the “holistic evaluation” of the student - that they really weigh a lot of different factors besides grades and test scores.
In MY opinion (so take that for what it’s worth), the B/K information / interview day is to woo the students and not to necessarily weed them out - UMD wants all these kids and know that they have a lot of other great choices. There are so many concurrent interviews with so many different panels that it’d be impossible to discriminate across them - I believe that they exist to make sure that the kids can speak for themselves and can think reasonably well on their feet. Some interviews are like a conversation, some go through the application for lines of inquiry, and some have a scripted set of questions. Students, do not think that just because your buddy had an earlier interview and told you the questions he/she was asked, that you will have those, or even similar, questions.
And on the stats… last year, there were ~33,000 applications, ~14,000 of which were offered admission… out of those ~14,000, several thousand were offered admittance to the Honors College (for 1,000 spots), and out of those, 400 were offered B/K, and out of those 250 were offered the full B/K… by any measure, 400/33,000 (12/1000) are long odds
Good luck to all!
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@MESMES - Thanks for your post. I have been trying for a while now to let people know that the UMD Admissions process… ALL of it… is actually Holistic. Your post will certainly help.
@SoofDad - D is a national merit finalist. I called UMD to ask if they give any scholarship for NMF if UMD is mentioned as first choice school. undergraduate admissions said they don’t have any specific scholarship for that and they have given out all the merit scholarships already.
Is this true? I read in some of the older threads where there are posts about UMD giving them $500 or $1k/yr for NMF scholarship.
Are all students considered for NMF scholarships at all by UMD?
what is the benefit of being a national merit finalist?