<p>You won’t have to wait until September. NMSC will notify their “50,000 top scorers” in April. If you are notified, you can be sure you will become a Commended student. (All top scorers who do qualify as NMSF become Commended. I agree that an IL student has no chance at NMSF).</p>
<p>The national percentile breakdowns just released suggest that the Commended cut-off will again be 200 for 2012 testers (usually its the top of the 96th %-tile), but do not take my inference as any sort of assurance.</p>
<p>Previous commended cut-offs are posted in the many qualifying score threads from past years that you can find in this forum (like this one: <a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1379508-official-national-merit-semifinalist-qualifying-score-thread-class-2013-a.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/national-merit-scholarships/1379508-official-national-merit-semifinalist-qualifying-score-thread-class-2013-a.html</a>). Briefly: 2011 testers, 200; 2010 testers, 202; 2009 testers, 201; 2008 testers, 200. Unlike the NMSF cut-off scores, the Commended cut-off is nationwide.</p>