When do National Merit Finalist rejection letters come out?

Paying for College National Merit Aid
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I’m a senior national merit semifinalists awaiting his national merit finalist decision. I know the finalist notifications come out in the beginning of febuary, I am not sure when the letters that inform you that you are not a finalist come out. What is the exact date or week?

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Iirc, they are usually right around the middle of January.

A quick Google pops up 1/16, 1/18, and 1/19 in the past.

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Thank you

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It looks like it was sent January 12 to my S. Oh well, Semifinalist status got him a good scholarship anyway!

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I say, “it looks like it was sent” because I use the USPS mail preview features which sends me an email with images of every piece of mail to expect each day. I just saw the image of a letter from National Merit Corp this morning.

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Thanks a lot for sharing that. If you don’t mind sharing, what is the reason he didn’t advance? Does it show a reason?

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Sorry to hear that but glad that he was able to reap some benefits anyway. At the end of the day, a good scholarship is all that really matters when it comes to the NMSF/NMF status.

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It will be a relief to get the finalist notification, as there are at least 2 schools he may attend with large NMFs scholarships. I’m always worried some part of the finalist application was screwed up, and this is my third NMSF child! You’d think we’d have it down by now.

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I just got off a call with a NMSC rep and he told me that the majority of the rejection letters have been mailed already, so if you haven’t received a letter by now there’s a good chance that your child will advance. This doesn’t mean it’s certain though; the only way to be certain is getting notified that you’re a finalist.

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I’m sorry to hear that :frowning:

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This is my first and I have that fear. Did we forget something? Did everything go through right? Ugh. What a crazy long process and I can not wait for it to be over!

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My son is also waiting but I never saw the application . He said he submitted it and everything was fine so if he doesn’t get it I will be wondering. I hope whatever careless mistakes he made do not kill his chances.

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13

Same here. I still remember hoping not to find the wrong letter in our mailbox two years ago and will again worry for the rest of this week even though I don’t really have a good reason to do so.

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14

Same. Back in September, it took us a lot of effort to get the semi-finalist notification from my D22’s school. Every so often, I log onto the NMSC portal but nothing’s there.

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Here too. It made it feel like a fast turn around.

Hopefully we’ll all know in a month.

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Has anyone else received the rejection letter?

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Just got mine - their stated reason is poor grades (have a 3.4 but 10 AP-level classes) but I still have a good scholarship to my top choice so I’m not too disappointed - It’s above the minimum for national merit finalists at this university so I’m assuming they wouldn’t raise it even if I did qualify.

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Hey thanks for sharing. I’m glad you still have a scholarship opportunity.

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They really shot you down over a 3.4? That seems unusually harsh for them. I have like a 3.74 which I thought would be safe, but IDK anymore

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From past CC threads on this topic, it appears that gpa isn’t a big factor in the evaluation process. I read that A’s with B’s are usually always acceptable, and 1 semester C can also be acceptable. More than 1 semester C is usually a deal breaker and i’ve seen that on this site before. This might be what happened here, not sure though. In my case, I’m really on the bubble as I have majority A’s 4 B’s and 1 semester C. I haven’t gotten a letter yet but I’m pretty nervous.