<p>glido, I agree with much of what you say. My D just started with full tuition/fees+ at one of her NMF safeties that she fell in love with. But she also had other equivalent offers at similar and higher ranked schools that had nothing to do with her NMF status. In our case we also could have scrimped and paid the EFC if we had to to send her to a school which offered less or no merit. So things would have worked out fine either way. In our city not many of the NMFs even take advantage of the big NMF scholarships, heading off to Ivies and near-Ivies by and large, with a few enrolling at our local state flagship. From last year’s 20+ at her school only my D and one other took an NMF full tuition, one took half-tuition and the rest enrolled at schools that give nothing or a couple thousand for the status. Not one took an NMF fullride. </p>
<p>However, I think there are kids for whom the NMF full rides at Kentucky, Idaho, etc. mean the world. If you are in a family that has relatively high EFC but no money for college, and/or no desire to spend money on college,it could be the only viable option and for those kids it is heartbreaking to miss NMF by a point or 2. Full tuition is not so hard for good students to get, but full rides at top200 schools for high EFC families are hard to come by. My D didn’t get any except for NMF. I know, kids can live at home, go to CC, etc. and manage somehow to patch something together, but it is a big loss to those kids in any case.</p>