National Merit corporate scholarship?

jazzymom
Fri, 16 Feb 2007 20:13:14 +0000

I don’t think there’s much strategy to worry about here. For the really highly selective schools, being notified that a student has selected them as a No.1 choice for NM scholarship probably barely registers since thousands of applicants are doing the same. He should just designate the college he truly considers his first choice. If he gets in and gets the scholarship, all is well. If he doesn’t get in and gets the scholarship, there is time to change the paperwork to send the money to where he is attending. A corporate NM scholarship follows the student wherever he/she is admitted.

Honestly, I don’t think college adcoms pay much attention to whether an applicant has indicated that college as a first choice. There are first-choice indicators who won’t get in and non-first choice indicators who will. S1 did not get admitted to his first choice so he just changed the NM paperwork to send the scholarship to his second choice, which did admit him. He was admitted to eight other colleges even though he did not put them down as a first choice for the scholarship. It doesn’t seem to matter.