MT and National Merit scholarships

mom2them
Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:26:20 +0000

I am a long-time lurker and today is my first day of posting!

My daughter is only a freshman, but she got a 192 on the PSAT selection index with zero preparation. We are in New Orleans and the cut off selection index for National Merit Semi-Finalists in LA has been 207, 208, 209 over the last 3 years, so we feel this score is within her reach by her junior year.

She wants to major in MT, but stay in the south so we are looking at FSU and UCF. She attends a public high school but has been in local & school musicals since 4th grade, been dancing since 3, can sing, play clarinet, etc. (She also was accepted to NO Center for Creative Arts -NOCCA a performing arts high school- but we are not sure how this will work with her academic schedule.) We are considering FSU and UCF as “stretch” schools as we realize they are VERY selective. Her safety schools are Southern Miss and Ole Miss which do not require auditions for MT admissions.

However, the only way she can attend an out-of-state school is to get a full scholarship. Luckily, she has a 4.0 GPA, is/will continue to take honors & AP courses, and tests very well on standardized tests. She also just took the ACT with zero prep and got a 26 composite.

In order to get a NM scholarship from ANY school, that school has to be listed as her first choice school by March 1. Do incoming freshmen know by then whether or not they are selected at FSU and UCF, or any other MT schools that are in the south that we are not considering???

I know I’m starting this early, but I have a son who’s a freshman in college and I wish I would have started things earlier with him. He’s attending a state school and majoring in engineering so things were easier for him. But for my daughter, only one public school in LA has MT and its only a BA and not particularly good… and she doesn’t want to go to Tulane.

Is anyone familiar with NM and MT??? I also posted this in the NM, UCF, and FSU threads…but they are not as “busy” as this one!

Any info would be much appreciated!