@albert69, I don’t know of any schools that give packages to all NM students then don’t give them all an “official” NM sponsored scholarship. OU gives the whole package to every NMF who lists OU as their first choice with NMSC by the deadline. Think about it - the schools want to brag about how many NM Scholars they have, right? Well, if they don’t give them all the “official” sponsored scholarship, then they don’t have Scholars, they just have NMFs. If they are going to give them a package anyway, they might as well make part of that package be an “official” award. Now, there are schools that limit the number of NM scholarships they give, but the schools that give money to ALL NMFs who name that school do not limit the number of “official” NM scholarships.
@Barfly So since I listed WSU as my first choice and they give a full ride scholarship and official awards, I am guaranteed to be a NMS?
Nothing listed for my son either. So we are 0 for 3 on the official NMSC award. :))
FWIW, here are stats:
School has about 800 per class. All 3 played 2 varsity sports, all 3 were captain of at least 1. All Eagle Scouts. Tons of leadership and volunteer hours. Excellent recs and I think very good essays (this coming from their mom, so….)
S1 Ranked #3. 4.0 GPA. SAT 2100ish.
S2 Ranked #2. 4.0 GPA. SAT 2190 or 2290 (not sure anymore).
S3 Ranked #1. 4.0 GPA. SAT 2100ish.
I’m glad none of mine got it because they did/will get a college sponsored award. Happy to let the NMSC awards go to someone else!
A BIG CONGRATS to all who get the NMSC award and all who did not! You’re all NMFs! Wow!
I suspect so, @albert69. Do you have a list of what they give to NMFs?
@Barfly Their unofficial award is tuition, fees, room, board, and $500 per semester for books for 4 years. Their official award is $1000 per year. If I got the latter, it would be included in the unofficial award.
@Barfly Thanks so much for your response! It has always been so confusing to me!!
Congratulations to the award winners! To echo the question from @Singersdad, where are you all viewing the info that says you got the award - is it on the Main Menu page of the osa.nationalmerit.org site?
So are we only NM Scholars if we get an official scholarship offer? And just Finalists otherwise?
Are we sure that all awards have been posted. I saw someone say they had been, not not sure if that is “official”.
In order to see if you have received it, log on to the portal. If you got a scholarship, it immediately displays a screen that says Congratulations. On the bottom of that page is a link to see exactly what you have received. There are also links to the letter being sent snail mail as well as the terms and conditions of the scholarship.
Yeah, it looked like that when I got my National Achievement $2500 scholarship. Under my National Merit section, however, there’s no scholarship info posted…I’m guessing that means I didn’t get anything
@ProjectGenesis…Yes, that is correct. If you receive any of the 3 official NM scholarships you are a NM Scholar. Those Finalists who don’t receive one of the official 3 remain Finalists, which accounts for the 6,500-ish Finalists who don’t become Scholars each year.
The $2500 awards are chosen from among all Finalists regardless of first choice because the deadline for first choice is not until the end of May and Finalists can change this designation as often as they want any time before that.
Having a first choice designated or not is irrelevant.
@albert69, does every NMF get the unofficial award? If so, then it just seems like they would give everyone an official award so that they could brag about how many NMS they have. I googled it and saw something about how WSU had recently (within the last few years) become a NM sponsor university and that a school needs to have at least 3 NM (or maybe it was 3 per year?) to become a NM sponsor university. But I don’t think the NMSC puts limits on how many students a school can give the official award to. I think limits if any are placed by the schools themselves, and it just doesn’t make sense for a school to limit the official award if they don’t limit how many can get the unofficial package. Am I making sense to anyone because I’m starting to not make sense to myself? Coffee………
To add to what @STEMFamily posted above, I agree that having a first choice designated doesn’t affect whether you get the NMSC $2500. None of my 3 kids had a first choice designated when the $2500 awards were announced and none of mine received the $2500 NMSC award. But I don’t think it had anything to do with the fact that they had not yet named a first choice. I think what it had to do with was that they were not the most deserving. I posted their stats in an earlier post FWIW. I think if you look at my kids or any other NMF on paper, they are probably all quite impressive young men and women! Imagine trying to choose whom to give the scholarships to from that group! While I think my kids can hold their own against anyone on ECs, volunteering, leadership, cuteness of baby photos, etc., there are other kids out there who have all that and ALSO nailed the SAT, or wrote an essay that made someone at NMSC cry, or whatever. Congrats to them! But for anyone who did not get it, it’s really only a bummer if you are going to a school that does not give scholarships to NMFs and you really need the $2500.
Otherwise, really, don’t worry about it. No one will ever ask if you were a NMF or a NMS. I mean, if the whole process and all these labels confuse us, it must really confuse people who have never been personally involved. Most people just hear the “National Merit” part, and don’t distinguish between commended, NMSF, NMF or NMS. So congrats to anyone who got the the NMSC $2500. And congrats to everyone else for being a NMF! Those of us here on this forum may be the only people alive who know the difference, and I’m not sure we do either.
@Barfly Lol, so true that last paragraph.
Yes, any NMF who names WSU as their first choice gets the full ride.
The Corporate Sponsored scholarships have been offered, and the $2,500 NMSC scholarships have been offered (with letters to follow). That leaves the College Sponsored Merit Scholarship Awards that have yet to be offered.
The 2013 NMSC Annual Report states that the College Sponsored Merit Scholarship Awards (Stipends) range from $500 to $2,000 per year and are renewable annually.
“NMSC provides college sponsors with lists of finalists who have selected their intuitions as first choice; college officials then choose the winners of their institution’s awards.”
“NMSC will begin mailing college-sponsored Merit Scholarship offers on May 1st.”
Starting on page 27 of the NMSC annual report, the colleges that sponsor merit scholarship awards are listed, along with the number of merit scholarships they sponsor (2013 info, but probably still accurate).
So, I’m hoping that a lot of the NMF’s who didn’t get offered one of the $2,500 NMSC scholarships yesterday will be offered a College Sponsored Merit Scholarship in the near future.
@Albert69, I noticed that WSU sponsors 5 of these scholarships. Did you happen to get any info about this during your trip to their campus? My son’s college never mentioned it, but I see that it also sponsors 5 scholarships. Maybe there’s still a chance?
@LMHS73 5 sounds right. I asked about those scholarships, but all they said was that those were chosen through NMSC and that if I got one, it wouldn’t change the amount of money I get, etc. WSU doesn’t get a ton of NMFs (I think 7 went there last year) so, I would say I have a good chance of getting one of those scholarships.
So if you get a college sponsored merit scholarship from WSU, you won’t get any additional stipend?
From Rdtsmith:
"And is it my understanding if a school already offered you a scholarship whether half tuition, full, full ride or whatever that takes precedence over any other awards or if you win the $2500 from NMF it gets subtracted from that college award?
As an example son was given the NMF from UA. Does that mean he’s not considered for the $2500 or may still get it and it’s subtracted from the $150k or we shouldn’t care either way as regardless being a finalist he gets the UA scholarship?"
My daughter just discovered she received the NMS award for $2,500 today. We asked how it would impact her NMF scholarship at UA and whether she should accept the award. We were told she should accept the $2,500 NMS award and it would reduce her UA award by that amount (stipend) for the first year. Hope that helps.