National Merit Finalist vs National Merit Scholar

STEMFamily
Fri, 18 Mar 2016 13:23:12 +0000

@mathyone You are definitely wrong and @mom2collegekids is correct on all counts.

1. Around 90% of National Merit SemiFinalists get notified that they are National Merit Finalists in early February, about a month before any get notified of getting a scholarship. You MUST be a National Merit Finalist to even be eligible to become a National Merit Scholar from any of the three types of scholarships.

2. The National Merit Scholarship Corporation ITSELF lists winners of any type of the three awards as a Merit (copywrited) Scholar meaning a “National Merit Scholarship Corporation” Scholar in their annual report in the numbers of NMScholars attending various schools. Schools like Alabama and Oklahoma that have college-sponsored awards have 200-300 Scholars. Those are certainly NOT all $2400 winners. \

3. My D and S were both winners of National Merit corporate-sponsored awards. In both cases, press releases published by National Merit declared them as winners of “National Merit” Scholarships. They are National Merit Scholars. AND they each accepted one of those large college scholarships (One at Oklahoma and the other at ASU) AND both still received the corporate-sponsored award in lieu of the small official NM college-sponsored part).