<p>Some schools--U/Oklahoma, U/Arizona come to mind...there are others--will offer very generous scholarships (and some with added stipends) for NM Finalists. USC will guarantee a minimum of a half-tuition scholarship and then go up from there (of course, the problem is, if you accept you have to attend USC. Meeeee-owww).</p>
<p>To one extent or another, it's a fair trade: all these schools are "buying high stats" and the students get a good financial deal in return. Some of these are coupled with Honors Programs.</p>
<p>DoneMom:
Why the confusion? Yes, the kids who will be graduating from high school in 2006 are finding out right now whether or not they are NM scholars.</p>
<p>I'm a National Merit Scholar and am extremely happy (and fortunate, considering the price of private education nowadays) to go to Caltech! It's too bad that the UCs don't give much merit aid (or some kind of perks) to NMFs, otherwise I would have considered Berkeley.</p>
<p>I'm confused because KarenC' says her son is a "2007 NM Scholar" (she did not say finalist..."scholar" means receiving the award) who is looking into colleges to apply to, which would make him a junior, I would think.</p>
<p>Yes. Sorry for the confusion. My son is in the Class of 2007. He is a junior and is just looking at colleges. We just learned that based on his scores on the PSAT that he is what his principal referred to as a NMS. We won't know until next year if he is a finalist. If he is a semifinalist or commended student, we will know in September, 2006. He is my oldest and I was just wondering about the impact of being in the top 50,000 of 1.4 million students. What is the correct terminology?</p>
<p>Yeah, juniors are notified in the spring if they're at least NM commended students. In the fall, based on their fall of junior year PSAT scores, IF they make the cut-off for NMSF (National Merit Semi-Finalist) they will receive a packet from the National Merit folks & it will have info & application form for applying to be a National Merit Finalist. </p>
<p>There are generally quite a few schools that offer generous merit aid. The ivies as a policy only offer need-based aid (with some VERY rare & notable exceptions). If you look at some of the merit award threads, you will read all you ever wanted to know about these & more.</p>
<p>Many of the very generous merit awards are tied to attendance at a specific school. My son (for example) & many of his friends are NMFs & have accepted 1/2 tuition from USoCal & will be happy freshmen there in August. UAz, AzSU, UTx, UFl, UOk, & many state schools offer generous awards for high-scoring students, often even for out-of-staters. It can be worthwhile to start searching now for schools who are looking for kids with your son's scores.<br>
My son's grades made him about the middle of his class but his ECs, test scores & credentials as a NMF helped him to get some nice merit offers.</p>
<p>KarenC
Congrats to your S!.Somewhere on CC is a link to the individual state cutoff scores from previous years.This may help you determine now whether your S will wind up commended or Semi finalist in the fall.Perhaps someone with more computer savvy than I can help her with a link?
Once he makes the jump to semi its mostly just a matter of filling out the proper paperwork,paying attention to deadlines ,scoring comparably well on the SAT, and getting his EC's and reccs in order to make it from semi to finalist.
There are many many schools that will reward your child for finalist status. You can use the "search" function at each schools website to find their info..thats what we did after S decided on his major area of interest.We put in "National Merit Finalist" and were able to get links to (usually) financial aid or admission pages that had detailed info.
D first (5 years ago) and now S were able to put together their major area of interest, a college they wanted to be at, honors programs, and tuition paid programs for themselves.For some recipients, NMF works great.For others who choose schools where NM holds no reward the designation,while an honor,has no monetary reward.</p>
<p>Thank you very much! I love this site. All I had to do was ask and you provided a wealth of information. Exactly what I was looking for. Thanks.</p>
<p>Thank you. Your response was very encouraging. My son is not highly motivated to succeed in school. He is bright and tests well and has lot of EC's. There is still hope that he'll get into a good school.</p>
<p>Karen
You're welcome!
Try using the phrase "PSAT cutoff score"or something like that, in the search box at the top of this page and see what comes up.Look through the threads for some postings,probably around Sept of 2005 when people would have beendiscussing the state cutoff scores.
If I can be of any other use as far as NM and its sytem,just PM me..we've used it twice now to our children's advantage.</p>
<p>Hi....I need some help. I am a National Merit Finalist. I will not be attending the school I had selected as my first choice. Now that I have admission to another school....can I re-nominate the new school. This wiil me to get some money.....rather than loosing it all.</p>
<p>National Merit Scholarship Corporation
1560 Sherman Avenue
Suite 200
Evanston, Illinois 60201-4897
Main Telephone: (847) 866-5100
Main Fax: (847) 866-5113 </p>
<p>The deadline to notify NM of your 1st choice school was 4/19, but you can always ask & see what they can do. The worst they can do is tell you it's too late. You can also tell your new school & ask them for advice & help. Good luck!</p>
<p>HIYOUALL,
If I remember correctly, you can change the 1st choice school after 4/19 but you may have missed the deadline for school sponsored scholarships offered by NMSC. Most colleges, with exception of Ivies and a few other top schools, offer additional scholarships directly from college but they also have deadlines. I would recommend contacting FinAid of admitted school...IMMEDIATELY. Colleges also have scholarship deadlines and they may already have past and $$$ been awarded. Good Luck.</p>
<p>If you made your designation prior to April 19th and that designation was in place when the first round of offers was released from NMSC on April 19th, it is most likely too late according to NMSC literature. But definitely call the Nat'l Merit offices immediately. If they haven't released an offer, they can and will change your first choice for you. (It's possible to designate by April 19th and not have a offer extended yet...especially if you first designated a school that wasn't a participant in the NM scholarship program. Some NMFs mistakenly do that...ex)designate Harvard as a first choice university even though Harvard doesn't participate/offer NM scholarships.)</p>
<p>My d was in a similar situation...but what NMSC explained to us was that she could change her designation from undecided to her first choice school after April 19th up until May 31st. But, if she wasn't designated as undecided and actually had her first choice college designated on April 19th, an offer for that college would be mailed on that date. Once an offer is mailed/extended, no do overs. No changes would be accepted and no new offers would be extended. Since she wasn't going to be finished visiting colleges on April 19th, we changed her designation to undecided to buy her time. She made her decision a few days ago, we changed the designation to UNC-CH and she should receive her NM offer in one of the later offer rounds (I believe there are five rounds total).</p>
<p>this is exactly the reason they advise you to maintain your NM status as "undecided" until the last possible moment.Hope future recipients are reading this and learn from it.</p>
<p>the answer to Hiyouall is no sadly. The change date passed long ago.
My daughter went undecided. Got accepted to 9 schools and choose
the one which couldn't care less about NMC finalists......Reed</p>
<p>Do people know that schools that offer their own college-based NM packages incorrectly call the students "National Merit Scholars"? So these listings often compare apples and oranges. Ivy Leagues only count actual NMScholars--of which there are only 2500 in the country--while the state schools designate any finalist as a scholar if you go to their school. That being said, a state school honors program with a lot of (college) merit scholars is still attractive...</p>