National Merit Finalist vs National Merit Scholar

suzyQ7
Wed, 24 Feb 2016 13:45:35 +0000

The program is pretty confusing. The way I think about NMF is this- If you make Finalist, the ball is in the student’s court. They are guaranteed to get a large scholarship of they choose (and get accepted to) a university that offers automatic tuition to NMF. If they end up going somewhere else- then its a bit more random. They have a chance of getting a corporate scholarship (if they happen to have the right relationship with a corporate sponsor) or get a $2500 award from NMC (which they have to be selected for). That is why out of 15K NMF, only 7400 students get something. In theory, if every finalist (15K students) choose to attend Alabama or another auto tuition school, there would be 15,000 winners (which would never happen).

I’m guessing that NMC has a variable amount of $2500 awards each year. Hypothetically- If 5000 kids win the tuition scholarships, and 1000 win corporate, then they may give 1400 awards at $2500 a piece (this gets them to the magic 7400 winners total). Another year, they may have 4000 kids win tuition scholarships, 1000 corporate, and they give 2400 awards. Not sure if this is correct, but if they have a fixed number of winners they are striving for, there must be a plug somewhere.

For those wondering why it takes NMS so long to run the program and announce winners, this is one of the reasons. Its a complicated contest to implement.