Hi - so this is actually SuzyQ7, but I have been unable to log into my account for the last few days (clocking “Post Data” loop, no matter what device I used). I have reported via email to college confidential- hopefully they can fix it. ANYWAY-
I spoke to the National Merit Scholarship people (finally) and had an interesting conversation. First of all - they are SUPER secretive about the selection process (who knew) and said that NONE of the index score cutoffs online are official. Every question I asked involved a long hold so the person can check with others on what they can actually tell me.
I asked about what the cutoff score was for this past September’s semi-finalists for boarding school students (specifically day students at a New England boarding school) in New England. After long hold, they could only tell me what the boarding school cutoff would have been this year for students attending a boarding school in my state. They did say that my state was “Boarding School Region 1” but would not tell me all the states that were part of region one. The cutoff score for this year for Region 1 was 225. So I quickly inferred (and mentioned) that that was the highest score this year - attributed to DC students and Internationals, so I said that must mean that New England is included in the DC Mid/Atlantic cutoff. Please Hold. “Sorry, can’t confirm that, but the score was 225 for your New England State.”
I asked “Why so secretive” and the after “Hold Hold please” I got the answer that they don’t want to give away how the winners are selected. OK. Thanks. The person said that this year will be almost impossible to infer based on prior scores because of all the changes. I mentioned how confusing the rules for the contest are, especially this year, with the changes. Silence. They basically want it to be secretive and they don’t want us to know how they decide who gets the scholarship. I’m surprised they didn’t throw out ‘holistic’ in the discussion… LOL
I did a little internet research and there are a lot of articles about how the NMS contest favors the wealthy. So, I’m inferring that they have changed the contest from prior years to expand the East Coast boarding school regions (vs separating out the boarding school regions into New Engand, Mid Atlantic, etc…) to they ALL have to meet the highest scores cutoff, thus reducing the number of ‘wealthy’ kids who win. So, if you are a scholarship kid at a boarding school - too bad -you have to meet the highest threshold, which was 225 last year. 225 out of 240. Not likely for us…