<p>A student scored 236 in PSAT, GPA > 4.2, a long award list in national and international competitions, extra curriculum and activities, volunteer, leadership activities, etc, has not received NMS yet, was put on particular school choice not the transferrable National Merit Scholarship.</p>
<p>Where could be wrong? Should this student contact NMS Corporation to find out whether a mistake in selecting has been made?</p>
<p>thanks a lot for any advice.</p>
<p>Making sure I understand the question…is the student a current h.s. senior? Did the student complete all the required paperwork last fall and receive notice in Feb that he/she is a national merit finalist? (Letters should have gone both to school and home with finalist status.) Did the student choose a school that offers scholarships to NMFs? (Some schools do not offer any scholarships…some do, but they are limited and competitive, some offer an award to all NMFs who name them by the school’s deadline).</p>
<p>If yes to all above (Class of 2011, have received notice of finalist status because all paperwork was done last fall, have chosen a college that gives NM awards and have sent that as first choice to NMSC…), notice should be coming soon.</p>
<p>Letters of school-sponsored scholarships for NMFs were mailed starting 4/27. My daughter received notice from her college that she will become a National Merit Scholar with them, but has not yet received a letter from National Merit. Her friend in the same city, is still waiting for notice from both her college and NMSC, but she did choose a school with offers guaranteed awards, and confirmed with the college and NMSC that all is in line.</p>
<p>Best advice – call NMSC and your college. If it’s not one that gives scholarships, and you were not selected for either a corporate or the one-time $2500 award from National Merit, then you may join the about half of finalists who do not move on to become National Merit Scholars…but check with your school first, realize if it’s a guaranteed, school-sponsored award that it may be in the mail to you, and follow up with National Merit as needed.</p>
<p>Good luck! Hope all is in order for you!!</p>
<p>Are you saying that this student is a senior and was named a NMFinalist, but not named a NMScholar?</p>
<p>Not every student with a high PSAT is named a scholar.</p>
<p>I think what the OP means is that the student did get a National Merit Scholarship sponsored by a school and the student does not wish to go to that school that gave her the scholarship. So the OP’s question is why did the student not get the transferable NMSC’s $2500 scholarship that could be used at any school?</p>
<p>Difficult question to answer without knowing all the facts but here are some possible explanations:
<p>Again these are just possible explanations based on my understanding and analysis of the NMSC process and I do not know if any of the above apply to the students case. If the student has been offered a school scholarship, then at this stage nothing can be done. You can talk to NMSC but I doubt they will tell you the selection criteria or why the student was not considered for NMSC’s own scholarship.</p>
<p>The student should have changed the school choice to undecided early on. That is why I always recommend that the first selection should be undecided unless that student has a very strong first choice that gives NMSC scholarships and will go there if he/she gets an offer. </p>
<p>Again please correct me if my understanding of your question was wrong.</p>
<p>thanks everyone for the reply and advice. Yes, mazewanderer, you summarized the question very accurately. </p>
<p>This student is high school senior and is NMF and was notified in February being the finalist. His SAT score is comparable with 236, 2330. The state cutoff score is 219. So 236 isn’t the most impressive score. However, this student has been accepted by most of the top schools, such as MIT, Stanford, CalTech, etc… So, school recommendation and extra activities/curriculum should not go wrong. The student did not apply to the #1 choice school indicated on NMS application form at all. And he has changed to undecided around 4/23/2011, right before 4/27/2011. The reason he changed to undecided is that none of admitted schools supports college-sponsored Merit Scholarship.</p>
<p>236 may not be a compelling score in this state, CA, however, this NMF was confident originally to get NMS because of the high achieving in national and international competitions. A NMS receiver last year in the same state was surprised that this NMF has not received NMS yet because this last year’s receiver’s PSAT score may be much lower than 236.</p>
<p>NMSC has been contacted and explained the remaining process: most of NMS awards were mailed in March. There is a little chance that these NMS can’t be awarded therefore a few additional can be considered. However, this chance is very little. all the NMS will be announced on 5/4. </p>
<p>So, is asking NMSC double the selection of this student and get a little bit explanation a reasonable thing to do? We can learn from this case at least by asking more detailed information.</p>
<p>As of now, the only suspect point is the essay as why the student did not get NMS since the student has improved the essay from applying NMS to applying colleges.</p>
<p>Any suggestions for step for last try?</p>
<p>thanks</p>
<p>So, are you asking about getting the one time 2500 award and being named a NMS?</p>
<p>I think that the SAT score is the big decider for that. What was this student’s SAT score?</p>
<p>I don’t think ECs and other awards come into play. My nephew was given a NMS one-time 2500, but he had a SAT 2400.</p>
<p>His SAT score is 2330, may not be high enough, comparing with 2400.</p>
<p>adliang:</p>
<p>The selection of the students for the NMF’s own scholarship of $2500 is done by a committee consisting of HS guidance counselors and college Admissions officers. They are not employees of NMSC. (Corporate scholarships are decided by NMSC staff as possibly there is likely to be less controversy there). Based on what you say, it must be something with essay.</p>
<p>Not all students offered the NMSC scholarship, take it (for what ever reason) so there are some residual scholarships that need to be awarded and that is what will be announced on May 6th.</p>
<p>Can you lobby for this student’s case to be considered? I would say that NMSC will not allow that and all the decisions will be made by the same committee that made the original decision. They have some criteria and they will stick to it. Imagine if students were allowed to directly present their cases to the committee. There would be chaos. That does not mean you cannot try but I would think NMSC has deliberately set up a separate committee (outside of their staff) so that there is total independence in the decision making. Hence NMSC will not forward your request to the committee. The committee may look at the application once more and make a positive decision, however I do not think that the chances are high. By the same token NMSC will not tell you why as the committee is independent.</p>
<p>In other words, while you can try and ask for explanations, I do not think you will get it. If they give you an explanation, then all the students who have not got that scholarship can ask the same question and NMSC would be obliged to answer them also. The consequences of allowing that to happen are immense. </p>
<p>If I were in the student’s position, I would leave it and move on and not even bother to inquire. If he is lucky to get one of the residual scholarships, he can celebrate at that time.</p>
<p>I do not think that the SAT score had anything to do with it. The SAT scores are OK, no one can find fault with a PSAT of 236 and SAT of 2330. You do not need a 2400 to get this scholarship. The only thing that stands out appears to be essay, again not having seen the package, we have to give the OP the benefit of the doubt that everything else was OK.</p>
<p>The student has some excellent choices and is obviously very talented. Let him/her just consider that as the luck of draw and not take it personal. The student should have no regrets.</p>
<p>It sounds to me like the biggest reason they didn’t get awarded a $2500 might just be timing. If they had a first choice school listed until 4/23 and the VAST majority of $2500 scholarships were awarded in March…it kinda makes sense to me. I’m not sure how NMSC handles the consideration of Finalists for $2500 scholarships when the Finalist has a first choice school listed. If they think the student would be better off with the college sponsored NMSC award, why would they offer that student a $2500 award?</p>
<p>Wolverine86,</p>
<p>Your thinking is very logical: “If they think the student would be better off with the college sponsored NMSC award, why would they offer that student a $2500 award?”. But NMSC denied this selection criteria.</p>
<p>I think it is quite tricky applying NMS after this exercise and the case presented. I’ll post more questions later on.</p>
<p>adliang…You’re right. I think those are some of the biggest question marks regarding the selection of a first choice school.</p>
<p>Does having a first choice school selected hurt your chances of being selected for a $2500 scholarship?</p>
<p>Does staying “Undecided” until late in the process hurt your chances of being awarded a college sponsored award?</p>
<p>My guess would be that NMSC won’t give a straight answer to either question, but it’s quite possible that they can’t…because it all depends on the universities involved in each individual situation. It does kinda stink that, unfortunately, no matter how the Finalists handle their first choice selections there’s always going to be about 45% of them that don’t receive anything.</p>
<p>I really do not think that having a first choice college affected (or in any way affects) the decision from NMSC on their own scholarships.</p>
<p>First the decisions are made by an independent committee and I do not think they would know which is the first choice college. For example some of members of the committee may be from one of the colleges and this would bias the situation. The committee consists of Admissions officers from Colleges.</p>
<p>Second, NMSC insists that you have first choice college mentioned before they mail out their letters. So if that logic were in place, one would expect that they could start second guessing their decision for every person. So if a student was forced to mention a choice, NMSC could look at the choice and say , “ha let us not give it to that person because that college gives good scholarships”. In other words, if they did that, it would mean the only recipients of NMSC’s own scholarships would be students that do not go to colleges that NMSC scholarships. That is not true. Scholdade in his thread gives examples of how different colleges treat students with NMSC’s own scholarship, and how they combine it with their own NM scholarship.</p>
<p>Third, they make it very clear that when you get the NMSC 's own scholarship, you can change you mind after that. Why would they then force you to choose a college and then loose the scholarship when they themselves give you a choice to change your choice? </p>
<p>Fourth, how do they even know that you will get into the college that is your first choice? They cannot presume that you will get into your first choice college as these decisions are made before most colleges make their decisions. </p>
<p>I think they looked at his/her application and for some reason decided not to award the scholarship. Without actually looking at the package, we can only guess it is the essay.</p>
<p>What puzzles me is how the student was a given a scholarship from a college when he/she went to undecided status on April 22nd. If she/he were in the undecided state on April 22nd, then they could not have been mailed a college offer on April 26th. I suspect that for some reason, the chance was not registered (may be sent by snail mail that did not reach them till after the 26th). If that were the case then NMSC rules are very clear, you cannot have another offer.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Yes it could. Some schools like U of Southern California (USC) need to have them as the first choice by March 1st, so you would automatically loose consideration if you delayed it beyond that date.</p>
<p>U of Idaho which gives very good NMSC scholarships gives only 25 of them. Those scholarships could be gone by the time the choice is made.</p>
<p>Hence, your strategy depends on the college that you choose. There is no one size fits all strategy.</p>
<p>NMF $2500 scholarship were awarded sometime in late March. From my understanding, if the OP had designated a first-choice college to National Merit, AND that college generally gives scholarships to NMFs, then he/she would not have been eligible to receive a 2500 award. Policy states that no person can get more than one award - so, you can’t get a college award as well as a NM award. NM may have assumed that the OP would attend the first-choice college, and receive a national merit related scholarship from the college. Because of this, they may have excluded him/her from their own scholarship selections. By the time the OP sent in an updated college form in late April, the funds for most corporate and 2500 scholarships had probably already been allocated. At least, that would be my best guess, because it sounds like the OP had impressive scores, ECs, etc., that should have otherwise warranted selection.</p>
<p>I’m not entirely convinced that the issue here is all about timing (although I do agree that it is almost certainly too late for this student to receive the $2500 direct grant from NMSC because most of that money has already been distributed.) </p>
<p>Putting the timing issue aside, there could easily be other reasons why this student did not receive the NMSC-sponsored scholarship:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Only 55% of all NM Finalists are even selected for NM scholarships - of any kind (NMSC, school, or corporate-sponsored). That means that 45% of all NM Finalists do not get any NM Scholarship at all.</p></li>
<li><p>Nearly all Finalists have high PSAT/SAT scores, high GPAs, long list of awards, volunteer and leadership activities, etc. so those factors do not automatically put a candidate at the top of the list for a NM scholarship.</p></li>
<li><p>NM Scholarships sponsored by schools are selected by the schools themselves, not NMSC, from the list of “eligible” Finalists (i.e., those who have designated the school as their “first choice.”). The fact that a particular school has offered a student a NM Scholarship does not mean he would automatically be selected for one of the NMSC-sponsored (or corporate-sponsored NM Scholarships, if eligible for any) if he turns down the school’s offer – or that he would have been chosen for these other scholarships if the school had not chosen him. (Although if he does accept the school’s NM Scholarship, he would automatically be disqualified from getting one of the other NM Scholarships, since you can’t get more than one.)</p></li>
<li><p>Out of the roughly 8,300 NM Scholarships (total of all kinds), there are just 2,500 actually sponsored by NMSC itself. (There are about 4,800 school-sponsored and 1,000 corporate-sponsored.) So just looking at the numbers alone, there is no reason at all to think that “received school-sponsored NM scholarship” necessarily means “would have received NMSC-sponsored scholarship.”</p></li>
</ol>
<p>I’m not, in any way, belittling this particular student’s accomplishments. (I have no knowledge of his specific qualifications, or how they compare to those of other finalists.) I am simply pointing out that NM Finalists should never assume they will get any money from the NM program, unless they are applying to one of the schools that give automatic NM Scholarships to every NM Finalist who is admitted there. Remember that there are 15,000 NM Finalists, and only for the 2,500 NM direct grants, and the NMSC is notoriously vague about the specific selection criteria it uses – or even the exact details about what the selection process is.</p>
<p>Timing has nothing to do with. If you did not have choice and you were being considered for the NMSC’s own or a corporate scholarship, NMSC would send you a letter asking to make a choice with the proviso that you can change it later. My S got such a letter and so many others on this forum.</p>
<p>NMSC will not give any award unless you have choice that you have notified them. And if they are considering you for an award, they will ask you for the choice and not notify unless the choice is made. Period.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Absolutely right. No one should assume they are a shoo in for NMSC’s own scholarship as you are competing with 14,999+ others for 2500 scholarships. For corporate scholarships, often there is no competition and that is why they give special scholarships for those unfilled slots. For College scholarships, you are competing only with those who apply to the college and in many cases, it is given to every applicant who joins the college and hence there is no real competition. In others, the most competitive awards are NMSC’s own.</p>
<p>Yes NMSC is very vague on the selection process. All they say is “using holistic criteria”.</p>
<p>Complicating everything is the state proportionate criteria. As the 2500 scholarships are spread over all the fifty states and other selection areas, students in some states have an advantage over others as the competition is going to be less.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>They announce the NMSC’s own scholarship after the corporate scholarships and before college scholarships. As I mentioned earlier, if they were considering a student for a scholarship and he/she did not have a college choice, they would have asked the student to make the choice.</p>
<p>maze…I know there were a couple of instances this year (and others I imagine) where folks that were “Undecided” got calls to list a first choice as they were being considered for a $2500 scholarship. Have you heard of any instances where someone who had a first choice participating college listed that got offered a $2500 instead of the college sponsored award? I’m curious how (or why) NMSC would handle that situation?</p>