<p>In general, only a very small portion of those big scholarships given out to NMF is designated as NM scholarship. The rest of the big portion of the scholarship is actually given by the school to the NMF student. Take U of Alabama as an example, only a $1000 of their big scholarship is designated as NM scholarship. So if your son gets the corporate scholarship of 1K-4K, U of Alabama will just subtract the 1K from their big scholarship. Your son still gets the rest plus the 1K-4K from the corporation. However, you still need to designated U of Alabama as the first choice school in order to get that big scholarship. Your strategy sounds very reasonable. Designate the safety school for now. Just make sure to remember to change it if your son decides to go to a different school.</p>