About National Merit Commendation

frazzled1
Sun, 29 Apr 2007 15:38:41 +0000

Doubledian, I think it’s completely unimportant, except for those schools that offer merit aid for Commended students. Many students don’t even take the PSAT, so colleges don’t hold the lack of commended or semi-finalist status against applicants. And some colleges attract so many commended and semi-finalist applicants that it’s a non-issue either way - they’re looking for other aspects of your application to set you apart.

JBomb, if you score at the cutoff (200 this year), you will receive a commendation. Whether or not a student achieves semi-finalist status depends upon each individual state’s qualifying index. Within the last 2 weeks, high schools received notification of which of their students scored 200 or above in the October 2006 test. They also received letters to forward to these students, informing them that they were among the 50,000 top scorers in the nation. In September, 34,000 of these students will receive official notification that they are commended; the remaining 16,000 will be named semi-finalists and go on in the process.

If you scored 200 or above, your school should forward this letter to you very soon (many students have had them for a week or more already). As a top finisher, you can notify 2 schools of your interest through NMSC (National Merit Scholarship Corp.). That’s the gist of the letter, which requires a 5/23 response (you may respond online). If you haven’t seen this letter yet, you might want to check with your GC.