<p>UT Austin is eliminating its National Merit scholarships beginning fall of 2010.</p>
<p>This just reflects the ever-growing stature of UT Austin - it no longer needs blanket guarantees to get the best students to attend. These policies gave bragging rights (we have more NM scholars than X) but also forced schools to give a lot of aid to some less than stellar students. I know of several who were ok students (B average HS transcripts with minimal AP/IB credits) who did very well on the PSAT/SAT and then were given this kind of award. They remained B/C students in college (they lacked the necessary drive). From the college’s perspective this was a bad use of scholarship $$.</p>
<p>UFlorida is headed the same way. Not so long ago, NM scholars were given ~free rides (which was very attractive to oos students). Now “all out-of-state finalists who name UF as their college of first choice will have their out-of-state fees waived.” Still a good deal but not comparable to the earlier room+board+tuition deal. Of course, this does not stop students competing for the top UF free-ride awards.</p>
<p>FWIW, NM Scholars and Finalists are selected after submitting applications including transcripts, SATs, ECs, recommendations, awards, essays–it is like a college application–the qualifying PSAT score is just the beginning. The scholarships some colleges give to semifinalists are the only ones based on PSAT scores alone. I don’t know how UT Austin used to make these awards, but in my state, a high school is lucky to have one Scholar annually. They have been great students.</p>
<p>^You are strictly correct, but most students know the cutoff scores well enough to know whether or not they will be scholars before they apply to colleges. Once accepted the applicants have until April to decide (and choose their 1st choice school) to get the automatic NM scholarships from those schools.</p>
<p>In DS’s senior year, 6 semifinalists were announced in his school with psats at a level where everyone knew they would/should advance. One did not. He had a very low high school gpa (<2). Two of the others were near 3.0, yet advanced. All 5 nm finalists were given large scholarships, but only three really deserved the scholarships they were awarded.</p>
<p>imho the required essays and recommendations are not very important in the process.</p>
<p>MSmom&dad, I think what you are saying is true for some states like Texas and Florida, but not true for all states. The Semifinalist cutoffs are pretty constant from year to year in each state–they don’t seem to change by more than a point or so, and most do advance to Finalist. But advancing from Finalist to Scholar is a bigger hurdle in some states (nationwide, only about half of Finalists become Scholars)–and our state U does not promise scholarships to Finalists. They sponsor only a handful via NM, and it is very competitve to be awarded these. Some other kids get (also competitive) corporate-sponsored NM scholarships; others get the (competitive) one-time award from NM. My state is one with a very high cut-off for Semifinalists, and maybe this is another reason we’ve never seen an undeserving kid get a scholarship? Some stellar kids here DON’T win this recognition, maybe because their PSATs were not quite high enough–it seems like they have to be in the 230-235+ range here. Is the scholarship cutoff score (that your kids seem to know about in advance) for Semifinalist, or is it something else? I it is really the cutoff for NM Scholar, how do the kids figure this out, and is this cutoff higher than for Semifinalist? I’ve never seen a list of NM Scholar cutoff scores for each state. Suche cutoffs may indeed exist, but I’ve never seen anything posted anywhere.</p>
<p>The NM corporation shows ~16,000 semifinalists are designated each year; ~15,000 become finalists. ([National</a> Merit Scholarship Corporation - NMSP](<a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/nmsp.php]National”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/nmsp.php)).</p>
<p>ProxyGC, I think you’re talking about “apples” and I’m discussing “oranges”.</p>
<p>You are correct that the NM corporation does not sponsor many finalists, BUT every one of those finalists could be a NM scholar IF they choose to attend a university that sponsors them. UT Austin, UFlorida, UArizona and several others used to be very generous to finalists and hence sponsored large numbers of nm scholars (in fact every finalist who chose to designate UT, UF, UA… as their first choice).</p>
<p>So why are there not 15,000 nm scholars each year? Many of the best of the best choose to attend a “top-10” school and most of those schools do not sponsor nm scholars. The only nm scholars at HYP are those who won a NMCorporation sponsored award or those who were sponsored by a company (which generally means they have a parent working there). The majority of the nm scholars at UT, UF,… were sponsored by the university.</p>
<p>“You are correct that the NM corporation does not sponsor many finalists, BUT every one of those finalists could be a NM scholar IF they choose to attend a university that sponsors them.”</p>
<p>This assumes there are approximately 7,000 university sponsored scholarships to cover those who did not receive NM corporation scholarships or business sponsored scholarships. </p>
<p>Anybody know if there really are that many? That number seems too high to me.</p>
<p>MSMom&Dad, You are assuming that every school that sponsors NM scholarships guarantees one to EVERY finalist that chooses that school as its first choice – but that is not the case at all. </p>
<p>Although some of the bigger State Universities (like the ones you specifically mentioned) may do that, it is very unusual for smaller schools – and especially private colleges – to offer an unlimited number of these scholarships. It is far more common to have a specific number of NM scholarships available. For example, Santa Clara University has just 4 NM scholarships available each year for which NM semifinalists are “eligible.” If more than 4 NM Finalists choose it as their “first choice” school, some are going to be left out and will not be “NM Scholars.” </p>
<p>I think we are going to see more schools placing caps on the number of NM scholarships that they will sponsor, or completely dropping out of the program like UT. Most schools just do not have the financial resources to be as generous as they may have been in the past.</p>
<p>The sponsoring colleges select from the names of Finalists provided to them by NM. Each sponsoring college selects recipients. If there are more Finalists than scholarships, it is obviously competitive. Thus Finalists are not necessarily guaranteed scholarships at colleges that only sponsor a few. About 4600 total college-sponsored NM scholarships are offered. See pages 18-20 for the number offered by each sponsoring college:</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/student_guide.pdf</a></p>
<p>Some colleges like Arizona State and Texas A&M offer their own (not via NMSC) full or partial scholarships to ALL NM Finalists, and award lesser amounts to ALL NM Semifinalists. It’s a recruiting tool for the colleges.</p>
<p>I think we are all basically agreeing here.
- IF a students is a finalist and WANTS to attend a non-top twenty, non LA college in an area which may not be their top choice he or she can be essentially guaranteed free tuition (There ARE several schools that guarantee these kinds of award to all finalists who name them as their 1st choice school - see <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/financial-aid-scholarships/649276-nmf-scholarships-updated-compilation.html</a> ).
- Many states do not have these kinds of guarantees (so a student would have to leave their home state).
- I stand by the my original statement that these deals vanish as the prestige of the university increases - they no longer need to offer it to get the applicants they desire.</p>
<p>^^^^</p>
<p>The assertion made in #1 still maybe incorrect. This thread clearly shows there are thousands more NMF’s than there are scholarships available. So a student meeting the criteria you have described could still end up without a scholarship. If you are asserting that a NMF MAY get a university backed NMF scholarship, that is correct. If you asserting, any NMF who meets the criteria you have established WILL get a university backed NMF scholarship, then the assertion is probably incorrect. </p>
<p>Further complicating assertation #1 is that many of the NMF university backed scholarships are less than full tuition.</p>
<p>Assertion #2 is correct.</p>
<p>Assertion #3 is correct.</p>