<p>If Northwestern’s policy is different, it just changed THIS year. I couldn’t believe it myself.</p>
<p>My son was a NM Scholar last year and took his $2500 to Duke.</p>
<p>Son’s friend got the $2500 award and went to Carleton. Carleton took the $2500 the first year and then awarded him $2000 for his remaining 3 years.</p>
<p>Some of you mention multiple schools that offered your student NMF scholarships. Do the schools contact your student, or does the student have to first contact them? If the colleges do the contacting, how do they find out which students to contact?</p>
<p>^neither. There’s a list of “participating schools” on NMF application, so you can see which schools award scholarships to NMFs. You have to name the school as your first choice and matriculate there to get the scholarship.</p>
<p>We relied on CC for the info related to large NMF scholarships. The participating schools list on the NMF application just shows those that will give “something”.</p>
<p>As a participating school UChicago (#1 choice) offered $1k/ year ($2k if student qualified for FA) a couple of years ago (I still think that’s their policy). If S had gotten the $2.5k from NM it would have been deducted from the $4k. There were 2 other NMF from his school: one that had a non-participating school as his first choice did get the $2.5k. The other one went to the local State Flagship and got $5k/year from the school.</p>
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<p>Schools generally contact them, but you should/can also look at the National Merit subforum (off of the Financial Aid forum). Some schools offering lots of NMF money will contact the students. D1 never checked off any of the “release my information” boxes on standardized tests, but she still got some “come here, we have lots of money for you” NM mailings. She contacted other schools that offer NM money herself. </p>
<p>I also did a Google search on any school she was interested in to find out if they offered any National Merit money, or confirm information from the NM forum. For instance, the Google search string
“National Merit” site:rochester.edu
searches for the phrase “National Merit” on just the University of Rochester website.</p>
<p>I recall deferring a state based one time scholarship (back then the max was $800- it has changed radically since then, although not in proportion to college costs) so I could still get the maximum from it - would have gotten less freshman year due to other scholarships.</p>
<p>Note that many schools that reward NMF also have scholarships for kids with high GPA and SATs. In other words, a student who does not quite make the cutoff for NMF based on PSAT scores has a good chance at merit $ at many colleges (not the tippy top ones) if GPA is good too.</p>
<p>Our elder son was NM Scholar. He took the NM corporate-sponsor scholarship from my company ($5,000/year for 4 years) and attended Stanford University. He refused to go to schools that offered full-ride. According to him, well known schools do not need to use money to attract students, students will come to them. After all, he is the one who does the studying, not us. The kids must like the school in order to do well in school otherwise they will be miserable. That is our opinion.</p>
<p>gongho–your son is correct, but just because a school is not well-known does not mean it is not a good school.</p>
<p>Or I should say, perhaps not “well-known” to your son.</p>
<p>My son was a NMF. He attends Northeastern University in Boston, MA. </p>
<p>Due to this NMF status, he was offered a near full tuition scholarship at American University in D.C. and 20K per year for four years at George Washington in D.C. UT in Austin offered him a one time, $1000 scholarship and UMASS Amherst offered him $6500 per year for four years but they were not related to his NMF standing. </p>
<p>Schools he did not apply to made very generous offers as well. We’re lucky that we could afford for him to choose a school that offered full tuition but not room/board. </p>
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<p>Certainly money played a part. Northeastern offered him full tuition for eight semesters (roughly 144K) but UT Austin would have cost us about the same, so it was not solely financial. He very much wanted to get out of Texas (no offense meant to Texans…we live here and would have loved for him to have been a Longhorn!), he wanted to live in a city and as we toured campuses he said he felt more at home on more modern campuses verses the older ones. </p>
<p>What finally put NU over the top was their co-op program. He really likes the idea of “trying on” a profession and graduating with a resume that will have 12-18 months of professional experience on it. He’s just beginning his second semester there and absolutely loves it. We count our lucky stars that it’s all working out so far.</p>
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<p>So your son assumes all students have the money to go to college?</p>
<p>A full ride is what makes it possible for some students to attend college at all. For middle class students it can make the difference between being able to afford graduate school or not in their future.</p>
<p>DD received $2500 that she could take to any school. She went to Yale.</p>
<p>Our daughter selected Baylor. She received a full tuition scholarship and also was awarded a corporate-sponsored scholarship of $6,000 over 4 years. She’s a sophomore currently and is very happy with the decision she made.</p>
<p>@mimk6
At Yale, wouldn’t the $2500 just replace some of their grant money? (unless you get zero need-based aid)</p>
<p>Not sure American offers “near full tuition” solely for NMF, particularly if it is not the “first choice” school. I recall my son was given a good package, but not almost full tuition. Your son probably had other factors that meant he got such a good offer. Sometimes it is hard to tell whether it is the NMF or the combination of factors that lead to good merit aid.</p>
<p>These are great schools! You talk about a number of schools making offers to your son. I think I’ve read you can only put 2 on whatever you fill out as a semi-finalist. So, how did these other schools find out about your son? Or did you son have to contact these other schools? Do you just find offers in the mail if your child is a semi-finalist? I am assuming it is not that easy!</p>
<p>It is exactly that easy. That’s why colleges participate in the PSAT/NMSQT in the first place.
[Student</a> Search Service](<a href=“http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/psat/about/tools/sss]Student”>http://professionals.collegeboard.com/testing/psat/about/tools/sss)
Note, that some of us say our kids were “offered” scholarships when we mean they got a letter inviting them to apply and describing what they would automatically qualify for. That’s not exactly the same as an official “award” which would come after you apply and are accepted. On the CC list of NMF scholarships, you can look to see which ones are “guaranteed” and which are “competitive”.</p>