@goinggoing, it was the donut day that did it for my S3. When S2 was invited, they had kolaches also, but I guess the price of a barrel is affecting Texas more than I realized.
DS got a letter today from NMSC. It said, Dear Finally-ist,
School has been out all week for snow, so we still do not have the February 2nd mailing to the school. Sigh.
@MinneMom2 March 1st is the deadline only to get your name in the first pool that NMSC sends to colleges. The actual deadline is May 31st but there is a very important caveat about May 1st when they start sending the award letters to college-sponsored scholarship winners. The full schedule and the warning about May 1st is printed on the back of the letter.
And as someone said above, make sure you meet the deadline the school imposes. Several schools require notification of first choice by May 1st and some are earlier than that.
@STEMFamily, my daughter’s all psyched for UK. To the extent that, if she’s accepted at Penn, I’m not sure she’d even go for a visit. The Patterson Scholarship is a sweet deal and they give credit for AP courses that the Ivies won’t. We all liked Lexington, too.
No letter in Kansas City today and I may be re-boarding the Freak-Out Train until DS gets one. I haven’t even exempted our mailman from accurate delivery yet, either. WHERE is that letter?! Where is our pigeon??!!
On a related note, a great friend of mine sent me a text this evening. She lives several blocks away, in a completely different neighborhood that has not - to our knowledge - ever gotten our mail before. She texted me a pic of a college mailing she’d gotten for DS - at her house! The mail dude has added a twist.
I keep reminding myself that the high school has told DS he’s NMF. They told him in front of other people. They couldn’t make a mistake about that, right? We don’t actually have anything in writing and, if you knew me in Real Life, you’d understand why I’m a smidge worried. :-<
@GoAskDad – if the school told him he is a NMF I really wouldn’t worry about it. D just received her letter yesterday (CA), at least 10 days after she heard from her HS. Hang in there!
For OOS students, the OU offer for NMF is a very good deal but be careful of how far the money actually goes. The tuition waiver does not include fees and the fees alone can eat up well over half of the $5500/yr stipend. (I estimated fees to be about $3500/yr, may vary by major). There is also $5000 from NMSC itself, so roughly $2000X4 + $5000 + $4200 +$2000 =$19,200 total for 4 years of room, board, books, travel etc. IS students get an additional $10,000.
Also note that the estimated value for the tuition waiver ($84,800 OOS, $20,800 IS) is for FIVE years. The fifth year is nice if you plan to take advantage of it with something like an accelerated BS/MS program. But you can’t just take the sum at the bottom, divide by 4 and get a yearly amount to compare with the COA. You have to take 4/5 of the tuition waiver for the 4-year total.
The NM office at OU was very clear to point out that they don’t offer a full ride. I think they estimated $5k the first year and $7.5K the next three years but this doesn’t include any outside or departmental scholarships. There seems to be several opportunities for students to make money working part time many of which would also look good on a resume (tutoring, internships, even some paid undergrad research positions).
For us we figure D can likely earn $5K in outside scholarship for freshman year and a small amount, maybe few hundred dollars scholarship each year after that. After her first year at school we want her to have some sort of job. She really wants to be an RA and that would be perfect but she knows that they have may more applicants than RA positions.
Even if we have to pay 5K a year we’ll still be saving money on what we pay for her now with gas, school fees, music lessons, orchestra fees and food when she’s at home. We actually want D to have some skin in the game so having her figure our out how to earn the difference between the National Merit package at OU actually works for us. By her second year, she needs to have a plan to make $2.5k a year or more after taxes.
My biggest concern is if she wants to take summer classes, the tuition wavier is good for summer but there’s still books, fees and R&B. I wonder if getting a job as a summer RA is easier?
@3scoutsmom It was a loooong time ago, but I was a Summer RA at my university. It was much less competitive to get that job, however I played a sport, so that was my in to be around the sports camps for the Summer. Typically most universities have multiple summer events going on to put the infrastructure to use while the majority of students are gone. That means less competition for the jobs on campus during that time.
I will tell you that towards the end of summer, they asked me about my interest in being an RA for the regular school year. Unfortunately with sports, I didn’t see that as possible. Point is though, being there over the summer with the limited student population allowed me to become that much more familiar with the campus administration that is around the entire year. Hope that helps.
I miss the days of looking forward to having the 90+ posts alert by the little globe icon. Ahhh, those were the days.
We received our letter Sat in N. Indiana ( pigeon must have dropped it off during the overnight stay 
DS is heading to Alabama also
@goinggoing such a relief with such a large scholarship on the line! Congrats to all who have made it!!! Yesterday GC gave him certificate and sounds like another meeting for press release is next. This weather is not helping the pigeons and crows! Hope you all find out very soon!!
Our son just got his finalist letter today, here in Columbia, MO. Hope yours did also, @GoAskDad
No letter again today in Kansas City. DS did not actually get anything in writing from his school last week - just told he made it. I’m calling NMSC in the AM to see if Jimmie can help me out - because I cannot wait until Monday. Seriously, I do not want to be an Urban Legend on CC. My DS’s school cannot even spell his name correctly - and it is an average name, spelled in the traditional form - so the whole “human error” thing has crossed my mind. Yes, I am neurotic, but I want that letter in my hands. Also, I can’t call all the neighbors again to see if they have the letter, though I do realize it’s possible. This is not really very fun. :((
@GoAskDad hang in there. It has to get here sometime.
@GoAskDad, can he ask to go see the certificate? In the 5 days or so between the school notification and our actual letter, I must have asked DS a dozen times if he really saw the certificate, or was just told he made it. Hang in there!
Today, in Colorado, our daughter received her finalist letter. But then again we have a PO Box and we haven’t gone to get our mail since Saturday. So, could have been there since Tuesday. Yea!!! We had heard from her school last Friday (after we asked them to look through the mail), and knew that she had made it. But why? why not on the website? We will never know, and now, it is in the past, no more kids fpr us to fret about. Some day the NMC will join the 21st Century. Good luck to all and hope the scholarships arrive in abundance! Go Class of 2015!
Can you tell the school you need a copy of the letter for something. You would feel better seeing it in writing.
@jscoutmom Keep in mind that workstudy income doesn’t count when figuring financial aid. Also if there is no initial percieved need the student can apply for No-need work study a few weeks into the semester at most Universities when it is clear some students won’t use their work study funds. Work study jobs are usually on campus, near classes and often will allow the student to learn more than in other jobs since the positions are partially subsidized by federal funds which generally allows the supervisors a bit more leeyway to have students learn on the job.
Thank you to those who suggested asking for a copy of the certificate! I’ll see if I can persuade DS to ask for that in the HS office today. He’s leaving for a college visit mid-afternoon, so he could rightfully say he’d like to take a copy with him to give to the admissions folks for their files. Or something like that. I would just like to see it in writing, (which I was trained-up to do from an early age by my Depression Era family, ha, ha). Have been sitting back with my feet up, considering the whole “free-or-almost-free college” thing, and I don’t want the chair pulled out from under me!
Also, I’m going to call Jimmie today, because what would it really hurt at this point? I wonder if NMSC would go ahead & at least give me a verbal nod if I sang my Country Song to them over the phone?
Between this and the IDOC fiasco------these are the people “running” education in America. Quite a brain trust.