"Update 8/29 11:40PM EDT
** Correction The highest cutoff nationally has been confirmed via a principal at NO MORE THAN 223. I misstated it earlier this evening as equal to 223. It’s still possible that it will be lower. No students at the school with 221/222, so we can’t use it to establish the cutoff. I should know better.
For students with 223 or higher in any state or selection unit, you’ve made the NMSF cutoff. Students below that mark will need to wait for further confirmation.
The latest info we have is summarized below. I’m trying to keep things up-to-date with reports from College Confidential and Compass. In addition to <=223 for the top state(s), the only individual state cutoff we know — as much as we can know things from internet reports — is IL at 219. There is not yet enough data to confirm a trend in the state cutoffs versus my original estimates. "
I would enjoy this so much more if I didn’t have a horse in the race. Not only do I have a horse, she’s on the bubble for our state. I’m trying to keep my craziness about it confined to this thread, but a lot of the schools she’s applying to have some pretty substantial merit scholarships for NMSF/NMF. If I go by Art’s guesses and what’s coming back, it looks like she’ll miss it by one point when the GA scores finally come in.
I’m trying to be cool about it-it will be what it will be. But being so close makes potentially not getting it that much more painful, I think.
Wow. A lot can change overnight! Well everyone who has a 223 qualifies is the news I was looking for! No need to watch the mail like a hawk today!
For those of you who are confused at what Art has done, I can probably shed some light as a DC expert. NMSC has several groups that it calls “special selection units.” These are DC, international (American citizen) students, and boarding school students. The boarding schools are broken down by geographical region within the US. I’m not sure about all of the boarding schools, but historically at least the group of northeast boarding schools, international students, and DC have all had their score cutoff set to whatever score is used for the highest state. So last year that was New Jersey at 225 and all of those special selection units had their score cutoffs set to New Jersey’s.
So it could be that Art has heard from a principal in NJ. It is an awfully safe bet that NJ will be the top state again, but just given how he worded it, I would imagine that he has heard from someone in DC or one of the boarding schools, or maybe even someone at an international school. They may send international mail first-class to make sure it gets there reasonably quickly. It seems like what he knows is that someone in one of those zones qualified with a 223. That’s all he would need for that post.
Thanks all for this high-stakes pass time over the last year. I’ve got my answer, now I need to figure out what we’ll do with it. We’re visiting U. of Chicago in a week. Their $4000 is nice, but I’m hoping even more that they have an interest in “collecting” NMFs. That seems to be the case. If one of my boys can get in, Chicago will make it affordable. Fordham is also a strong option. We’ll have to see.
@MotherOfDragons – totally get that!! Feel for you and others like us on the bubble.
@candjsdad – huge congrats!! Feel so proud. Good luck making the most of it. Thanks for your thoughts about what he 223 might mean and have been from. Hopefully today we’ll get a lot more scores posted and more clarity.
Wow, so if DC/NJ are going DOWN, from 224/225 to 223 (or lower), and Illinois is going UP from 215 to 219, it seems that there is a good deal of compression of scores. (which I guess is what has been predicted…)
It seems like the overall number of 16,000sf (and each states’ particular allotment) would be very hard to come close to since at each SI score there would be a larger number of students than in past years. Wondering if that 16,000 number is likely to be overshot this year, more so than in past years?
Just a bit of encouragement for those of you on the bubble, but who don’t have word yet - I still think that all (or almost all) of the cutoffs will come within Art’s ranges. Some of them, including the 223 cutoff, are already at less than the maximum estimate. It seems like there will be few, if any, that end up at the minimum estimate, but there is still hope for those of you in the middle of Art’s ranges.
@MotherOfDragons We are Georgia as well. I emailed our GC this morning and he said the school had not received the list yet. My son is probably going to miss it by a point or 2. Not a big deal money wise since Georgia Tech is his first choice and they don’t offer any NMSF money. But it is still frustrating to see students in other states with lower scores get NMSF.
This is such a roller coaster. DD (MD, SI=220) texted a few minutes ago that she was called to the office. A few minutes later… “It was just mail from some university >:-|…” DC being <=223 leaves the window of hope open…
@cowboy1999 No one has posted yet. There are so few reporting right now that it is too early to tell where it will land. Today and tomorrow should hold the answer though.
@mommieme – so sorry your son missed it!! 214 is as Art at Compass had predicted for LA but so many of us were hoping the cut offs would be lower than hey are turning out to be.
The small piece of good news is that the reported Louisiana cutoff reported matches Art’s prediction – so maybe not every state will be on the high end.