I get hot under the collar about education, too. I’m the black sheep in our family for not being in the classroom. Aside from me, it’s teachers and administrators on both sides, going back multiple generations until you hit one room schoolhouses and contracts specifying that a female teacher will no longer be considered fit to serve if she marries. 
But where NMF is concerned, my philosophy can be summed up as “Go on, take the money and run!”
^^^ couldn’t help but read that last bit with a little tune!
I just talked to Lori in the OU National Scholars office. Bad news. The in-state National Merit package has dropped from $68,200 to $64,000. We went line by line down the Scholarship Package pdf, comparing 2017 to 2018.
In-State Student changes:
The Technology and Textbook Allowance: down to $1500 from $2000.
The Research and Study Abroad Stipend: down to $1500 from $2000.
…and the biggest hit: the first-year Housing Scholarship: down to ZERO from $4,200.
Ouch!! Where’s the DISLIKE button??
Thank you for reporting that, @HeliMom74. Forewarned, and all. I wonder what kind of hit the OOS package will take?
Well, knock me over with a feather. She loved the school that is 40 minutes away.
Woo hoo, @bearcatfan. Glad she like it. 
Agree 100% with @DiotimaDM. If my 222 S misses out in TX but @ShrimpBurrito’s 217 D makes it in OK, I will not mind one bit. I can’t stand when people complain that NMSC isn’t “fair”. It’s a private corporation, it is relatively transparent about how it chooses to structure its scholarship contest, and it sticks to its published structure. Honestly, it gets so old hearing the same complaints about the way SI is calculated and the way NMSF cutoffs are chosen. I say if your student is NMSF, wonderful! If your student misses NMSF while lower-SI students in other states make it, bitterness and complaining will get you nowhere so you might as well just let it go and congratulate the kids who do make it.
@bearcatfan Wonderful news!!!
NMS is so tough in our state…it honestly never figures into the equation for us but that’s ok :). Honestly, so happy for all the kids on here who are able to benefit! 223 is the cutoff and she was close but definitely not close enough :).
Making NMSF but not advancing to finalist can actually be a red flag. Our oldest made NMSF in a state wheremthe cutoff is one of the highest in the nation. His grades kept him from advancing. It turned out he has a dislike for “academic writing” that wrecked his HS GPA, caused him to crash and burn his freshman year of college, and basically made him hate school after his freshman year of HS. I say this because I would be fine because I would be fine with “bright slackers” who score big on a one time test but don’t perform in the classroom being taken out of the equation and letting borderline kids who have worked hard replace them. I’m not talking about those with a couple of C’s; I mean those with multiple D’s. Why not make room for those who have earned the honor? BTW, I suspect our son would agree.
Ouch. I assume OOS will be similarly, if not even more, effected. Frankly, don’t want to even call Lori at this point.
@DiotimaDM He is planning on retaking and trying to get his score up. Started with a local ACT tutor this week. However I do believe the last ACT sitting they will accept for the scholarships is the December test.
@mstomper, I wasn’t talking about advancing to NMF, just making the NMSF cutoff. I believe the NMF application process is in place to do exactly as you suggest and weed out the “bright slackers” as you call them. NMSC consistently advances over 90% of NMSF to NMF, and NMF is not state-focused as NMSF is. The 16000 NMSF spots are allocated to states according to the population of eligible graduating seniors, but the 15000 NMF are not allocated that way, or at least not as rigidly as NMSF.
Answering questions about her remaining very busy summer schedule (AP, blah, blah, blah, summer reading blah, blah, blah, internship, blah, blah, blah) while simultaneously filling out the common app last night, D says “I don’t want to go to college.” 
=))
And I actually did this to her… :-@ Returned serve. Thank you.
Your kids sound easy by my standards. ^:)^
It is really hard for me to try and place odds on where S18 will end up. Of the schools where I think admission is likely and we can afford, either outright or with reasonable likelihood of aid, my best guess is:
Miami (OH) 35%, Ohio State 25%, South Carolina 25%, Cincinnati 8%, Xavier (commuting) 7%.
Those odds will change considerably if he is admitted to any of the following with big merit: Rochester, Georgia, Dayton, Indiana, Richmond, Villanova, American or George Washington (some of these don’t have an early action option and might fall off the list by Christmas, depending on what S hears back by then). These are mostly academic matches or safeties (stats went up in June), but financial reaches. All offer merit scholarships for which S seems like he might be competitive. How competitive, I don’t know. This is our first go-round with the application process. I’m not entirely sure what to expect so we are casting a wide net.
And he will no doubt attend either Vanderbilt or WashU (where he has legacy, to the extent that it makes any difference) if he is lucky enough to be accepted and get big merit aid, which is of course a huge Hail Mary.
99.99 sure UTD
00.01 chance UT Austin or other (seriously doubt he’ll apply anyplace other than UTD)
Ahh, the odds making makes me nervous! :-SS I don’t want to jinx it! But I admit when I look over her current list of about 12 schools, I see… patterns. H and I are in agreement that we see her very likely heading off to either of 2 schools on her list, so I’d place those together at 75%, and the rest, including her safeties could be lumped together at 25%. Of course, things are very fluid right now as she is still navigating the list on her own, and just yesterday threw a school off the list. It wasn’t a school I expected her to end up at, but I did think it had some solid positives going for it. She also declared an extreme fondness for one of only 2 reaches on the list, of course. I reminded her it was a reach so not to get attached, but that it’s good to have reaches, and fine to like them. So, shifting sands around here right now. Once she’s settled on a final list I’ll post it, but I’m feeling oddly superstitious about it at the moment. I think I’ve posted some that we’re looking at before though, so the intensely curious can find it :))
As far as mailings, we opted out after sophomore year I think, and volume slowed to a trickle. Now we pretty much only get stuff from schools we’ve actively engaged with, and occasionally from Pitt for some reason.
I know S only checked the box once (sophomore year PSAT) and he swears he didn’t opt in to marketing for any other testing but the junior year flood was crazy. Now it’s hardly anything. I’m actually a little jealous about everyone getting the huge book from Yale recently that S didn’t get. He’s gotten a couple things from Yale before but not this latest big book. How silly that I would think such a thing, when there’s zero chance S would apply to Yale and he almost certainly wouldn’t even look at the book if he got one. :-j
@AmyBeth68 Have you seen anything substantiated with respect to this?
3% Bryn Mawr (Same as BU and I’ve heard they only guarantee Merit for one year then pull it)
[/QUOTE]
The school’s web site clearly states their merit scholarships are renewable for full time students. I’ve seen a couple accusations of front loading at BMC but nothing more substantiated than that.
This is fun reading.
Besides being somewhat disinterested, D is away so I really have to guess these chances. They are all admission safeties:
Stockton 30%
Rowan 25%
TCNJ 20%
The rest will be dependent on competitive scholarships so she will have to decide what she wants to knock off and what she can manage:
Ursinus 5%
Lebanon Valley 5%
St. Vincent 5%
Westminster 5%
Elizabethtown 2%
And just because: Franciscan 3%
Re: NMF schools, D flatly refused to look at any of the Texas schools. We are fortunate that she does not at this time expect to go to grad school so we can be more flexible. At this point, I have made her apply to UA, but the only school she’s interested in that will have any NMF money is USCal. I really wish we could flip D18 and S19, he would be happy to attend any of the full tuition schools.
Stanford .00001%
USCal 20%
??? - she really just has no idea!