Does anyone know if ASU is more than full tuition for NMF? We haven’t considered it because we really are hoping for closer to a full ride.
I’m not really sure how we came to pick the NMF merit schools that we looked at. Probably the places that are generally closer to our home in Austin, TX. Also, I’ve lived in the south most of my life so it’s what I’m more familiar with - and I have done all of the research (she hasn’t done any).
The schools we have looked at are:
Baylor (would be great because it’s close to home, but she would need to get additional scholarships outside of the NM full tuition)
Ole Miss (this is probably my fav, for the money she can get and I LOVED the charming town)
Alabama
Oklahoma
Texas in Austin (this school is highly unlikely because they won’t give my kid money)
^^^ oh yeah, we’ve looked at Kentucky too, but they will come off the list if they take away their NMF scholarship.
Forgot to add: Franciscan University of Steubenville to S’s list.
@crazy4info - Your D is interested in film, right? Gaylord at OU is definitely a good option, but so is UNM. Good film school and third most popular filming location after Hollywood and New York. Full ride for NMFs. I have no idea which program is better between OU and UNM, though.
http://cinematicarts.unm.edu/
http://cinematicarts.unm.edu/interdisciplinary-film-digital-media/
https://scholarship.unm.edu/scholarships/non-resident.html
(If I’ve said this before and UNM is off the list for some reason, please forgive me. 
)
OK here is our board for D18 - all subject to change with visits and evolving plans. We are instate for CA, dual citizenship for Canada options, and open to anything OOS that is competitive with instate options. Likely bus degree at all but may apply to a direct entry OT program as well.
SDSU - 30%
Cal Poly SLO - 20%
OOS Merit Options - USCar, Bama, FSU, College of Charleston (maybe more) 30%
McGill/UBC - 10%
UCLA - 5% (largest reach on list w a 30 ACT, 4.0 UC GPA)
Towson - 5% (Direct Admit OT Program and very reasonable)
@DiotimaDM - she is interested in film, and I had totally forgotten about UNM. We have been checking it out this week, and she read your wonderful visit report on the UNM board. We need to arrange for a visit. Thank you so much for the links!!
Re list generation: S is in a high school program requiring extra academic experiences. The students attend various approved activities (lectures, tours of STEM companies or labs, visits to science museums, etc) and submit reports of their activities for credit. One of the ways to get credit is to tour a college. Early completion of the required credits is helpful, so lots of students try to get it done freshman year. This is a long explanation to help others understand why I was taking my son on college tours in his freshman year. I viewed these tours as laying the groundwork for “real” college research to come later, plus he got to knock out some credit for his academic requirement. He just wanted the credits. He liked Stanford (we were in the area for a vacation and had a free morning the day we flew home), loved UT Austin, disliked Rice, and hated TAMU. Actually, in freshman year he declared he would go to UT Austin for computer science. That love affair lasted for about a year.
Sophomore year was when the college marketing started, and then S scored a 220 SI on his PSAT (had he been a junior he’d have made NMSF with that). So we knew he had NMF potential. He’d finished his academic requirement freshman year and our vacations didn’t take us near colleges, so we didn’t tour any colleges during sophomore year. After the sophomore PSAT came back in December I started researching colleges that offer NMF scholarships. S was monumentally uninterested in doing his own college research, and was thankful when I offered to do the legwork for him. He was intrigued by a mailer from WPI, which at the time offered an automatic NMF scholarship, so after my research he ended up doing a residential summer program there after sophomore year and he loved it. Because we were flying into Boston to take him to WPI I persuaded him to tour MIT, which he ended up liking very much. He had zero interest in any of the other excellent colleges in the Boston area though, and refused to tour any.
Junior year many trees died in vain. I made S look at the heaps of college marketing but nothing caught his eye at all. I lurked on CC and learned about UTD, and Tulsa is fairly popular with students from S’s high school, so I arranged tours at both over Thanksgiving break. Both offer good merit scholarships, and of course UTD has a fantastic automatic NMF package (Tulsa also has an excellent scholarship for NMF but it’s competitive). After Thanksgiving he had UTD, Tulsa, UT Austin, WPI, and MIT on his list. I pronounced it a good list and told him I was done driving the process, and I would happily arrange tours for any more colleges he wanted to see. He never did add any.
Re: being on bubble for NMF. Technically, we are, too, but I think S is pretty safe. Not all the way safe, but very good odds.
S has a 223, and the highest CA has ever been is 221, even adjusted for the recent scaling change. Even though Commended went up by two points, the CA cutoff would have to hit 224 to knock S out. Possible, but highly unlikely.
Things get a lot stickier for us if that 224 materializes, though. I’m not exactly sure what we’d do. We’ll know by the end of August, so I won’t worry about crossing that crater until after the mushroom cloud appears.
I would think a 2 point margin is pretty safe in TX, too, but I’ll be pulling for all of us. 
I’m so thankful that my D is a 225 in TX…I’m a big worrier, and I feel safe to take that off of my list of worries.
Yes, S has a 222 SI in Texas for his junior year qualifying PSAT and although he’s PROBABLY safe he’s definitely not a sure thing for NMSF. If he gets NMSF I’m not at all worried about NMF; his stats are stellar, he has never had a disciplinary issue, and his school generally has at least 20 NMFs per year so there’s no worry that the staff will let something slip. He’s not great at essay writing but he can certainly put together something coherent and serviceable enough to check that box on the application; again I’m not worried because I know the essay is given very little consideration for NMF. On a practical level, not getting NMF wouldn’t really change anything for S. He doesn’t need the scholarship and he loves UTD.
I’ll play the board game:
Alabama - 40% (this is a financial reach w/o the ACT score otherwise this would be MUCH higher)
Texas Tech - 30%
Ole Miss - 25% (ACT at play here but the reach doesn’t seem as high)
UH/Lamar/UAH - 5% UH and Lamar are very much safeties both for admission and financial. But both are frowned upon by DS. UAH has better scholarships than UA and is about an hour from my MIL house. But not the big campus/football team feel.
It’s crazy how much this NMSF stuff varies by state. D has “only” 217 SI. (I know it’s a fantastic score.) She wouldn’t even be on the bubble in TX or CA, but lucky us ( :-L ) we live in a state with a terribly underfunded education system. Our teachers are leaving the state in droves and I don’t blame them. I’d trade D’s probable NMSF status for better public education in Oklahoma in a heartbeat, but it doesn’t work that way, unfortunately.
Anyway, OK’s cut last year was 213. It’s likely to go up, but up five points would be quite the headliner, especially given the nose dive OK education has taken the past couple of years.
@ShrimpBurrito Re; NMF varying by state - You know, given the cost of a college education these days and how hard kids have to work, I say to take it however you can get it.
I’m grateful that we even have a shot at it, and no way in heck do I begrudge students in lower cutoff states.
@TexasMom18 With Bama, you know the ACT score counts right up until a week or two before enrollment, right? So the window for taking it hasn’t closed yet, and won’t close even after HS is over. There’s still time to try for another point or three.
@DiotimaDM Thanks, you’re right. I get a little hot under the collar when talking about public education in our state. It’s such a mess.
@ShrimpBurrito
What do you think of David Boren specifically?
I don’t follow his doings all that closely, but what I’ve seen, I really like. OU seems to be very healthy despite the state funding issues. I’ve heard nothing but good reports from past and current OU students.
Also a good time to remind that OU has not released it’s NM Scholarship benefit descriptions for next year yet. I expect those late next month.
I know you are asking @ShrimpBurrito, @DavidPuddy, but I am going to butt in and answer.
In the two-plus years my 2015 has been a student at the University of Oklahoma, she has truly grown to admire Boren. My girl advocates strongly for the LGBTQIA community and for ways in which the University can better accommodate LGBTQIA students. She is a fan of Boren. I really like him as a university president. He works hard to bring in donors, has created a wonderful NMS community, and is very accessible to the students.
Ohhh boy. I hadn’t even considered that OU might change their NM policies. For the record, OU’s National Scholars Program has been rushing D hard. Multiple phone calls and mailings, encouraging her to visit and learn more about the NM program. That would be AWFUL if they substantially changed the benefits. I’m sure a lot of 2018 NMSF-probable kids are counting on OU.