What kind of students typically become NM scholars? Are extracurriculars crucial - only the students with the most interesting, unique EC’s have a chance? Is the essay the golden ticket? Or is it largely dependent on SAT scores, so students who have near or above a 2300 are all set? I’m just curious. There doesn’t seem to be much information on the kind of student who gets named a scholar. And nobody from my school has ever done it before, so none of my counselors or teachers have any idea what it takes.
Are you asking about the $2500 NMSC scholarship winners?
@BobWallace Yep. I know that it’s different for corporate- and college-sponsored awards but as for the actual “National Merit Scholars” who win the NMSC award directly, not through a college or corporation, how do they do it?
This has been discussed previously on CC. There is no formula. The top 2500 students are selected by a committee. The winners are prorated by state, just like the semifinalists.
High GPA seems to be a common but not universal trait of the winners.
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but as for the actual “National Merit Scholars” who win the NMSC award directly,
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There is no set rubric…however, when we made a thread to figure this out, it appeared that a high PSAT and high SAT seemed to be a dominating factor. But, in some cases, maybe because each state is supposed to have an equal number of boys and girl winners, there may be some “dips” in scores to achieve the balance.
That said, all NMFs who get a NMF award from any of the sources…college, corporate or NMCorp…are ALL NMScholars.
Here’s an old thread where stats of winners were discussed:
One student with a 2400 SAT was reported as a non-winner, so there is more to it than SAT score.
The winners of the NM Scholarship are awarded to those who have not already accepted a college or corporate award. So, it the ‘best’ candidates already accepted an award, the ‘NM’ award would be the next 8500 or so Finalists. It is mostly about test scores, confirmed by grades and tweaked for regional and demographic reasons. ECs mean nothing, but teacher recommendations do matter. It really makes no difference in life to get name NMS one method or another. In fact, the worst way is to get the NM award because it is for considerably less money than most college or corporate driven awards.
Like Mom2collegekids mentioned…they are all NMS. Don’t get caught up in the false narrative that someone some NMS are ‘better’ than others.
You have it backwards. The $2500 NMSC scholarship winners are selected by a committee in January, long before the corporate and college awards are decided.
You have said that before, but I looked into it and it is incorrect.
Students who have been accepted into college sponsoring institutions and listed them as 1st on their list are slotted into those immediately upon making Finalist. They pay out more money and you can only get 1 scholarship. NMSC does not want to have a long list of winners turn down their scholarship. The $2500 awards go to those who are not already getting a scholarship elsewhere. The entire ‘decision-making’ process begins in January, but they take the college and corporate awards into account at that time.
I would suggest talking with people on the committee a bit.
@BobWallace Thank you for the link! It was helpful.
Thanks to all who replied and thanks for the clarification that corporate/college/one-time NM scholars are all considered scholars. For some odd reason my school does not seem to think that way. We have had students in the past receive college-sponsored NM awards but my school maintains that “nobody here has ever won the NM scholarship before.”
So it looks like SAT > PSAT for NM scholarship consideration. As for EC’s I’m just glad there doesn’t seem to be as much emphasis placed on extraordinarily unique EC’s as in admissions to elite schools.
This is from NMSC’s documentation:
Torveau, your description is nonsense. Colleges are not even notified of college choices until March, so the scenario you invented doesn’t even make sense.
Not true, Torveaux. My daughter listed UA as her first choice early on and was awarded the NM $2,500 scholarship along with the generous five years of tuition+ perks college sponsored scholarship. Bama reduces their $3,500 stipend by $2,500 for the first year, however, because of the one time award. I’m not really sure why it doesn’t stack as other scholarships do and as I have read that some other schools allow, but the reduction is disclosed in the offer. Still a nice honor for her extremely high stats.
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Don’t get caught up in the false narrative that someone some NMS are ‘better’ than others.
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Very true. Someone posted awhile back that only the one-time $2500 winners become NMScholars, but that is not true. If you get an “official award” from a college, a corporation, or NMCorp, then you become a Scholar.
There was a time when Alabama only had $1k be the “official part,” so it was better for our son to accept the $2500 annual award H’s company in addition to the remaining big NMF award from Alabama
Corporate scholars are not in the running for the $2500 prize . This was confirmed to me when I called NM. You cannot win more than one NM scholarship. They specifically said the committee looks at corporate affiliation and that group is confirmed and set aside. My husband’s employer sponsors ALL NM dependents so our daughter never had a chance at the $2500. Some companies only sponsor a few finalists. When they are chosen, they are taken out of the pool under consideration for the one time award. The remaining kids with the corporate affiliation but who were not awarded corporate, can then go back into the pool.In theory, maybe all finalists are under consideration for the $2500, but in reality, the known corporate scholars are pulled out.
That makes sense. The corporate-eligible NMFs apply prior to January and there is a separate NMSC committee that selects them in January.
The claim that made no sense was that the winners of college-sponsored awards were somehow pulled aside in January. That is not possible, since the colleges select their own winners and they are not even notified until March at the earliest.