<p>RE: post #118</p>
<p>^^Also, one of ms. ladybug’s links criticizes the fairness of having different PSAT cut-offs for different states, in other words, you criticize them for practicing geographic affirmative action. </p>
<p>Yet, the other part of your post criticizes national merit corporation for NOT practicing other forms of affirmative action–racial, gender, and socioeconomic. </p>
<p>I don’t get it.</p>
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The bolded quote is in the section for $2500 award (National Merit Foundation-sponsored award), so it is referring to that only.</p>
<p>It says that every finalist competes for it. Maybe it’s just a misleading statement, because people have said that people sponsored by businesses are not eligible to compete for it, and also that the timeline is such that the business-sponsored scholarships are announced before the National Merit Foundation awards are announced.</p>
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<p>They have been changed. According to the College Board, one of the motivators behind putting the writing section into the SATI was to help bridge the “gender gap.” Essentially, the idea was to have two sections relying on verbal talent and only one for math. (I read this in Newseek or Time, not sure which.)</p>
<p>Actually I just looked at this link, Revised PSAT Debuts in October | FairTest
and all they did was put in a writing section as well. Same thing they did for the SAT ten years ago.</p>
<p>Ms. Ladybug, no need to get your wings in a knot. goldenboy8784 said upthread he was not named a Scholar, so he is not one of the “super qualified” “brilliant,” either…although he did go to Duke to be surrounded by them.</p>
<p>The bottom line is that awards only go to NMF’S who either
1] enroll at a college that sponsors NMF’s or
2] has a relative who is employed by a company that sponsors NMF’s or
3] is chosen to be one of the 2500 or so one time $2500 NMSF award winners based on an opaque formula that takes into consideration the students state of origin, as well as a students stats.
The order of when awards are announced is not important imho.
But obviously NMSF does determine which students have corporate sponsors before they find out what colleges students are accepted at.
It is not inconceivable that a NMF with a corporate sponsor decides to go to a U like USC, which offers a much larger NMF scholarship than that corporation. That decision may not be made reached until May.</p>
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<p>It also takes into consideration academic achievements, a personal essay, a recommendation from a college counselor, and classroom performance and rigor of the high school curriculum.</p>
<p>^ which are factors in choosing all 8300 NMF’s, not just the $2500 award winners.
the $2500 award winner have state of origin as an additional determining factor.</p>
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<p>Most of the university-sponsored scholarships are given automatically with National Merit status, are they not? That was my impression.</p>
<p>I don’t know much about the business-sponsored awards. 1,000 are handed out, but I don’t know how many of the finalists have relatives in the sponsoring businesses.</p>
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<p>Collegealum, perhaps you might like to contact the good people at the Fair Test organization who analyzed the facts of the score disparities on the PSAT, and share with them your insinuation that they are terrible and absurd at making arguments. Im sure theyd love to engage in such honorable debate tactics with you.</p>
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<p>No, I prefer to get my undies in a bunch. Knotted wings make it hard to fly in the face of worthy adversaries.</p>
<p>Most of the university-sponsored scholarships are given automatically with National Merit status, are they not?
please read posts that have already answered this question.
1,000 are handed out, but I don’t know how many of the finalists have relatives in the sponsoring businesses"
It goes to reason that at least 1000 do.</p>
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<p>Not quite. The ONLY reason that the SAT I changed was that the University of California threatened to drop the test as its admission requirement if the former Subject Test on Writing was not incorporated into the SAT 1. At the time, UC required the Writing subject test. Since UC was then more than 50% female, gender was not an issue.</p>
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<p>This thread just caught my eyes and I haven’t read beyond the first two pages yet and don’t intend to. Don’t know if this has been discussed, but it is incorrect to assume that NMS’s who receive the NMSC $2500 are stronger students than the NMS’s who receive college/corporate sponsored scholarships.</p>
<p>Many kids have a choice to take either the one time NMSC $2500 or the larger college/corporate sponsored scholarships. IIrc, NMSC would actually call the students and ask them to decide so they can pass the one time scholarship “down the chain” if need to. NMSC gives out a more or less fixed number of one time scholarships every year. So if an NMF gets notified as a recipient of the NMSC one time scholarship but decides to take a full-ride at XYZ, and hence forever be recognized as an NMS via college sponsorship, does that make this student a “weaker” NMS? In fact, because this student decides to forgo the NMSC $2500, a “weaker” NMF gets a chance to become a NMSC NMS.</p>
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<p>There is a lot of confusion here. I used post the differences a lot in the NMS thread under scholarships.</p>
<p>There are two types of National Merit Awards: The official and the non official (I call these the extra goodies).</p>
<p>Official scholarships comes from one of three sources
<p>Again repeat the above values are the limit to the official NMSC scholarship. Some is going to jump and say “NO, USC provides half tuition, Alabama provides a lap top, Arizona provides and ipod …”</p>
<p>Yes they do but it is an unofficial component provided by colleges to National Merit Winners (and finalists in some cases). It is what I call the extra goodies and in Alabama it includes tuition, board, summer reserach, laptop etc. It can be worth thousands of dollars a year.</p>
<p>So there is an official component and unofficial component. U of Chicago gives only the official component. Alabama gives an official and unofficial component. </p>
<p>So how does it work in Alabama. You get $2000 per year as official component and everything else as an unofficial component. Let us say you get NMSC’s own scholarship of $2500. So what U of Alabama does is for the first year allow you to take the $2500 and for the next three years give you $2000 as unoffical component. All the other goodies are given for the four years.</p>
<p>So some colleges work with you to ensure you get the best of both worlds i.e. get a scholarship from NMSC or corporations and get the extra goodies given to National Merit Finalists.</p>
<p>The top schools (HYPSM, Caltech etc.) give nothing and if you got a scholarship, it is from a corporation or NMSC.</p>
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<p>The only post to address to address this said that some of the university-sponsored scholarships are automatic and some are not, depending on university resources. No one has addressed what proportion are automatic. Since most people think that they are automatic to NMFs, it’s a fair question.</p>
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<p>Obviously. But the award would be quite a bit more competitive if there were 10,000 vying for the scholarship rather than 1001.</p>
<p>no confusion on my part.
USC does the following:
“So some colleges work with you to ensure you get the best of both worlds i.e. get a scholarship from NMSC or corporations and get the extra goodies given to National Merit Finalists.”
NMFs at USC receive $1000/year from NM [ which is provided by USC as the sponsoring U]
AND 1/2 tuition scholarship.</p>
<p>"But the award would be quite a bit more competitive if there were 10,000 vying for the scholarship rather than 1001. '</p>
<p>If a COMPANY sponsors NMSF scholarships, then in theory, ANY ELIGIBLE STUDENT who reaches NMF status can receive the scholarship. If there are 10,000 students whose parents work at NMSF sponsoring companies reach NMF status in a given year, then, in theory, 10,000 scholarships [ paid for by the companies] would be given out. There is no telling how many students each year may qualify for these awards. They are competitive, in that students have to be eligible, but once that hurdle has been reached, the scholarship is awarded.</p>
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<p>OP, a bit sloppy on the banding. Playing by your rule, HYC(altech) (or is it CHY? :)) should be in the same band by %, which is what your parenthesized notes supposed to convey/justify. MIT & Princeton should be the next band…then comes the cliff.</p>
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<p>Let us say a corporation gives you $2400 a year, then USC would (I assume) allow you to keep the $2400 a year but will not give their $1000 a year. You will however still get the half tuition scholarship. So you get $1400 more in the year as compared to those who got the scholarship from a USC.</p>
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<p>OK, there are two trains approaching each other. One is traveling 100 mph and the other 135 mph. They are 230 miles apart. One one train, an accountant is calculating compound interest on an initial investment of $1000 (when the trains are 230 miles apart) with a 7.3% annual rate. The amount of interest you have when the two trains meet is the amount that USC national merit scholars get per year.</p>
<p>I hope that clears things up.</p>