<p>I’m wondering about this too. My S is considering several schools that offer NM scholarships, most of them “assured”, and many of which require the candidate to name the school as their first choice school with NM. </p>
<p>Since money IS going to be a factor in my S deciding where to attend, I’m not sure how the timing will work out. He’s going to apply early everywhere that offers EA or rolling admissions. Would he get a finaid offer letter excluding the NM money before the deadline to designate the school as top choice? Even so and even if the NM award is assured, it seems like it could be unclear how the NM award would change other awards (especially if any of the money were need-based, but even with multiple merit-based scholarships, they do not often “stack”). Would calling the school finaid office get an “authoritative” answer he could count on in this case?</p>
<p>FWIW the schools my S is considering that offer NM money, and what we think their NM scholarships are (not yet double-checked) – these are all (I believe) per year for 4 years:</p>
<p>WPI ($17K assured)
RIT ($15K+ assured)
Northeastern (up to full tuition - 36K - (competitive?) - must designate as first choice)
Drexel (full tuition - 29K - assured)
UVM (full tuition - 12K - in-state only - must designate as first choice)
NJIT (tuition, fees, room & board if on campus - 33K - not sure if assured or competitive - must designate as first choice)
U of Rochester ($17K+ assured - must designate as first choice)
USC (half tuition - $19K - competitive - must designate as first choice)</p>
<p>Northeastern says: “In order to receive the scholarship, you must designate Northeastern University as your college choice to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation before April 29. To receive this scholarship when Regular Decision admission decisions are made, you must also send a copy of your Finalist notification letter to Undergraduate Admissions by March 1.” </p>
<p>If other colleges have rules like this, that makes it fairly easy to do the actual official first choice selection at the last minute once you know what all your offers will be. But it sounds like not all schools are that flexible about it. Since finalists are announced in February, could S send notification to all his schools at that point to find out what his package would look like if he selected them as his first choice school?</p>
<p>If he were to decide to attend a school without a NM scholarship of its own, does it still make sense to designate that school in order to qualify for the NMCorp scholarship? (Is that a one-time $2500 scholarship?)</p>
<p>Also my employer offers a small corporate NM scholarship (1K/year for 4 years) to children of employees, but it’s very competitive. And I’m not sure how that plays into the game here. </p>
<p>I believe (correct me if I’m wrong) that those scholarships given to NM finalists (and sometimes semi-finalists) that don’t require you to designate the school as your first choice are not “officially” NM scholarships, and thus don’t preclude a student from also being awarded a NMCorp or Corporate NM scholarship. So it does seem like at the last minute, if you decide to attend a school without an official (or any) NM scholarship, you should still name that school as your choice to be eligible for the non-school-based awards, correct? (Those awards are small enough that while nice, they’re not going to be huge factors in deciding which school to attend.) I’m a touch confused because the press release for my corporation’s award last year was April 29 which seems early if students were just designating their schools by that date. We certainly wouldn’t want S to be awarded the corporate scholarship and be removed from contention for a larger school-sponsored award! </p>
<p>However I’ve ALSO heard that sometimes at the schools that offer large NM awards, only part of the money is the official NM award – so perhaps a school that offers $17K/year for NM finalists who designate the school as their first choice, only $1K or $2K of that is actually the NM scholarship (that would be lost if receiving a different official NM award) and the rest is a “regular” institutional scholarship that just happens to be awarded on the basis of NM finalist status. </p>
<p>Could they make this any more complicated?</p>
<p>If anyone can clarify how the timelines usually work in the spring of senior year (HS), I would be grateful to understand a bit better!</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>