National Merit and Early Graduation

nngmm
Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:36:24 +0000

“Most schools that give scholarships to NMFs will then give you their scholarship starting in your sophomore year in college”.??? Where are you getting this from? Colleges that participate with MNSC use the scholarship $$ to encourage high scoring seniors to matriculate at their college. In order to qualify for NM sponsership, seniors have to notify MNSC by May of their first choice college, which must be the college they will be matriculating at in Sept… I haven’t seen anything on the MNSC website that says you can get scholarships starting your Sophomore year or retroactively.



menloparkmom,
My daughter is in this exact situation. She will be graduating HS in 3 years. She was accepted to WUSTL, and will go there in the fall. She took PSAT her sophomore year, but it turned out that it was a “practice” one, so she could not use it. She took it again this year, and got again a score that will make her for sure a semifinalist. After she got into WUSTL, I called them and asked how her NMF status will be handled if she becomes NMF next year. It took a little work getting to the right person, but they told me that, although they can’t start it this year, if next year she is named a NMF, she will get the scholarship they give all NMFs, and get the first year one retroactively.

I heard of several other schools that give the scholarship starting sophomore year (when the student is named NMF).