@BostonDad2 thanks for that info. we definitely thought it was guaranteed too. … and my D’s friend might be affected by this. I wonder if they changed the wording?
I was very careful looking up which schools were guaranteed and which weren’t when my D applied and I was sure Northeastern was guaranteed. Hmmm
I think it’s “guaranteed” - just the AMOUNT isn’t specified.
All it does for me is replace need-based aid, so not a huge deal, but I see why this could be critical for other families.
NE bumped up S’s scholarship after he put them down as his first choice school - but it was less than 30K. Disappointing…
@arisamp can he still change his college choice to another school? Was it close to 30k? I really didn’t like the wording on their website of “up to” 30k.
For reference, when I applied I indicated NMSF and they gave me a Dean’s Scholarship of 22k. Remains to be seen if that will be bumped up. Hasn’t changed yet, and I updated my first choice to NEU from undecided on 3/28.
@ShipAlreadySank - his original offer was 15K I believe. With the first choice designation, NEU changed that to 23K - I missed the “up to” wording on their site completely!
He can still change the first choice school - however, it is indeed looking like he won’t be using this anyway. The schools at the top of his list right now don’t do anything special for NMF.
@arisamp It’s slimy of them; the wording does seem deliberately vague. And hell, the scholarship isn’t even no-strings attached! You have to do a certain number of volunteer hours every year, in addition to any academic requirements.
Well, sounds like he’s headed off to somewhere nice. Congrats!
Just received word of a $1,000 per year corporate scholarship. Can someone please clarify for me? I thought that you could accept both a corporate award and any award that your individual school offers. I am attending Indiana University, and they also offer $1,000 per year through the university, so can I collect both the corporate scholarship and the one from IU? I have been trying to call NMSC all day, but the person who contacted me has not answered. Can anyone clarify?
@GoPack87 I don’t believe that you can accept both.
For those of you who have been following my storyline with Northeastern - I called again today, told them that I’d been told to decline my NM $2500 and immediately heard “Whoa. Who told you that??”
Sometimes I think that navigating financial aid is the real college entrance exam.
@ whitespace - Thus my comment from 04-05-2016 at 4:38 pm edited April 5:
“I am still trying to understand how this works. I was under the impression if you got a NM scholarship (such as the $2500) and you also got a large offer from the school itself…that the school would just reduce their amount the first year by $2500 so the total was the same (ie: freshman year @whitespace would get $2500 + 27,500 NEU = 30,000) Is this not correct? Why would @whitespace need to turn down the $2500?”
Why, why, why do they make it SO complicated?
I think that they should enact laws governing the financial aid, etc. offered by colleges…I think their offers should be on the same type of form, formatted the same way, with the same categories, etc…just like the credit card companies were legislatively mandated to do a few years ago (because their bills/statements were not uniform, thus consumers could not “decipher” them…). If they did that, it would be much easier to understand the “bottom line” and compare offers…
@4kids2graduate I must have missed your post earlier, but I love all of your suggestions. There has to be a way to make it more simple and a lot easier to compare, although I don’t know if Congress is really the one we want simplifying. 
In my NEU package, I got sort of a fact sheet that was helpful, I don’t know if other schools do something similar.
@whitespace I highly recommend You build your own sheet and plug the numbers in to compare. That exercise alone forces an understanding of a lot of the details of what is offered.
Thanks! I’m pretty confident on the details, but I did do my own analysis. (If you want to call a random Excel spreadsheet analysis). Northeastern was the cheapest of my three options by far.
@GoPack87 You cannot get both a NMSC Corporate Scholarship and a college-sponsored National Merit Scholarship. What other people are referring to when they say you can get both are those scholarships sponsored by a school’s own funds for National Merit Finalists but apart from funds that are paid directly by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. At Northeastern, some small part of their scholarship is funded through NMSC as the college-sponsored scholarship, but the rest of the money comes directly from the school and not through National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
HOWEVER, for the University of Indiana, their scholarship or $1000/yr is an actual National Merit Scholarship funded through the National Merit Scholarship Corporation. The money for that scholarship is paid from NMSC to the college in the fall for an enrolled NMF.
Likewise your NMSC Corporate Scholarship funds will be paid on a yearly basis directly to whatever college you attend. The advantage of the corporate-sponsored scholarship is that you can take it to any school you want.
So these are both awards from NMSC funds and you cannot get both. You could talk to Indiana office of scholarships and ask if they will consider replacing the NMSC college-sponsored award with some other scholarship money from their own funds. It can’t hurt to ask.
@nw2this and @What???!! (re: posts 456-460) The corporate scholarship I was referring to is from the Mead Witter Foundation. S just got a letter with more info from them, and they give 10 scholarships of 2,500 renewable to finalists from Northern Wisconsin, so it’s pretty specific. As I said before, there was no special application and can be used anywhere.
Forgive me for a short vent: I’m so proud of my son for making NMF, but I feel shortchanged as it actually did nothing for him in the end. His never got the certificate others mentioned. Nothing printed in the local paper (yet pages of athletes’ accomplishments). And of the 6 colleges to which he was admitted, two give no merit aid to NMFs (he chose one of those two.) Oh well. He is admitted to an excellent school and he and I am elated for that. It’s just a pity about the NMF journey. Anyone else have this experience? Vent over. I feel better.
@pickpocket DD will not get any merit aid for her NMF status as well, but it was her choice to attend school that doesn’t award NM vs taking a full ride somewhere else so I am fine with it. She did not do any special preparation for PSAT and her NMF status was sort of side product as she was working on her SAT preparation.
thanks for the response, @Ballerina016 Yes, definitely the same boat.
@pickpocket Similar experience here, but not quite as severe as yours. The school district in our large suburban county put out a press release last September identifying the 238 NMSF’s in the county. But our school made no announcement about it at all, there was nothing in the school paper and nothing in the yearbook. About two months after SFs were announced the school put pictures of its 6 SFs in a window cabinet in the lobby which nobody ever looks at. And she did get the cert when she became an NMF. But D chose a college which has lots of NMFs and gives no financial aid, and she didn’t get one of the NMSC awards. I retired two years ago from a corporate sponsor company where she would have gotten an award, but they only give awards to kids of current employees. So we are thankful for what we have, a wonderful daughter who will go to a great school of her choice.
We feel very fortunate! My daughter received official designation that she is a UF National Merit Scholar! So, UF gives her a NM Scholarship of 500/ semester. Big deal right? BUT… that qualifies her for the Florida state sponsored Benacquisto Scholarship!! Woo Hooo!!! That is a full cost of attendance scholarship for those receiving a NMF scholarship from one of the 5 participating universities. This is only the 2nd year in existence and we are THRILLED!! Plus my daughter received the $20k President’s Scholarship from UF which will Stack with this state scholarship. So she will be PAID to go to UF It’s GREAT to be a Florida Gator!!! No way was she going to take her offer from Michigan. UVA or Berkeley all of whom offered her NOTHING but about a quarter million in debt when she graduated and wanted to go to grad school! Now she will enjoy college stress free! Hard work pays off!!!