It’s a new rule, as discussed back in this post. Future NMSF getting auto-admit in ETAM would be a huge relief. I know of a NMSF who had a minor slip-up his freshman year, hurt his GPA, and ended up with his second choice engineering major.
Yes it is! We confirmed it with A&M’s National Scholars recruiting office just to make sure it was real!!
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Thank you!
We were told at a National Scholars event that NMSFs are guaranteed admission to Engineering Honors. The deadline to apply is February 15th and NM applicants should be notified within a week after that deadline of admission to the program.
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We haven’t seen that anywhere. Awesome if that’s right!
I really do not understand the complete obsession with NM Semi that A&M has. It seems to override everything. Auto scholarships and if you don’t have it you can’t apply for the big scholarships. In state tuition for OOS of course. Now auto to Honors and being the ONLY path to avoid ETAM?
NM is nice but it is something only a few of the Top 50 schools take much notice of at all. I know 2 kids from my son’s HS who last year where NM and not even Top 25%. It’s a test that shows you can test well more than anything and it is a 1 time test in your Junior year. It is also a prerequisite for pre-admission to EnMed.
I don’t even care that much that A&M wants to throw scholarships and extras to NM folks but what I do resent is it is the ONLY path for so many things. There are a lot of outstanding students with incredible resumes who aren’t NM, yet no matter how incredible their background is unless they have that designation they will be denied most of those opportunities with no redress.
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It’s not the only path to auto-admit to 1st choice Engineering major in ETAM. A 3.75 GPA will still auto-admit to 1st choice.
But, yeah, I get your frustration at all the red-carpet treatment given to a single test during 11th grade.
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It’s the only path out of High School is the point. You are describing how to succeed in ETAM not avoid ETAM. You can have a 1600 SAT with a 4.0 with 20 APs and have a laundry list of STEM EC’s and if you weren’t NM Semi it doesn’t matter, you have to do ETAM. Getting a 3.75 simply means you succeeded with ETAM which is very different than not having to worry about it at all.
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And as an applicant at A&M, you can have all of those things and not be able to get a scholarship at all! 3 years ago we were at an OOS recruiting event (all paid for by A&M except transportation to there), and the elephant in the room was that there were all these amazing kids they wanted so much to attend A&M that they hosted them at this event but didn’t want them enough to award scholarships to make it competitive with their other offers elsewhere.
I dont get the emphasis on NMS either since it is based on a test taken fall of junior year. Then again, my kids hs did not mention the importance of that test and I didnt know, at least for first son. Hopefully, all highschools will make it clear soph year so students can take it seriously and start planning.
Out of the top 50 schools only USC, Tufts, and Vanderbilt give any specific scholarship money for NM that I am aware of. It’s just another award to them. It’s nice but for an elite application it may not even be in the Top 3 Awards on an app. It’s mainly used by good but not great schools like Tulsa as a measure to bring in more NM students so they can brag about having NM students. That makes zero sense at a school like A&M with 79k students. A few hundred NM don’t impact numbers much at all. What does impact numbers is not having merit aid for that thousands and thousands of top students who are getting huge merit offers from others.
Also, at all of the elite schools I mentioned there are many other paths to getting significant scholarships besides NM and they certainly don’t use NM as a prequalifier to get you out of something like ETAM or for automatic Honors status. I love A&M but the obsession with NM is one of the dumbest things we do on every level and we seem to be tripling down on it.
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I agree completely. The thought of a nms TAKING a spot in a competitive engineering major from a student who has a higher GPA is just wrong. SAT test is completely different from how someone might do with calculus, programming, chemistry and physics freshman year college.
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Agree with everyone’s points.
It’s especially head-scratching when you compare the PSAT/NMSQT date (early part of 11th grade) to ETAM application date (end of college freshman year) – that’s 2.5 years of experience later. The student is a different person.
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Howdy! My son got invited to Discover Aggieland coming up later in October. Couple of questions:
- Is it worth it as it is during a school day?
- Is it invite only?
- How many will be in attendance?
Thank you!
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I don’t know the answer to this, but could it be that the number of NM students a school recruits is a factor in the national rankings formulas? Or just a marketing highlight? Obviously schools like Tulsa and Bama make a huge deal out of it. I’m sure A&M is dying to break into that Top 50 group. I don’t really know why they don’t have more scholarships that do not start from NMF status. Avoiding ETAM is a HUGE incentive to NM kids.
Are we all sure the NMSF get their choice major IN Engineering or just get Engineering and don’t go through holistic but still have to go through ETAM?
@mommabear27 its the former
scroll down to auto entry reqs
@ched03 has been before so may be able to answer your questions. Mine was invited too and we are signed up to go so “following” for the answers I don’t know. It will be worth it for us since we have not done most of the tours. I did find out today that transportation is provided, which is nice in theory but would require having to leave super early in the morning since we aren’t super close to the regional center.
It has zero impact on rankings and is actually looked down upon by elite schools who put only modest value on an SAT and little value at all on a PSAT. The PSAT measures people who just test very well and it can also be gamed by someone who is properly prepped for it, especially if they know so much importance is placed on it. You will find no ranking system that values NM and SAT scores are of far less value than years past.
It has value and it’s a nice accomplishment but it should never, ever be seen as more important than actual grades and rigor when looking at something like Engineering.
A&M is already just inside the Top 50 but it could easily move to the Top 25 if it wanted. Just get rid of Top 10% and go holistic. Cut the size down to 60k. Superscore SATs. Offer merit to top students in Texas to keep them here. Reduce class sizes. Get rid of ETAM to attract top students and have a strong holistic review for Engineering AND Business prior to acceptance. Most of all get rid of the insanity of Rolling Admissions, we are the highest ranked school in the country that does Rolling.
Essentially act like Georgia Tech or Florida.
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I get most of this, but I actually like the ETAM concept. I think giving the students a year’s exposure to different disciplines before they pick a major is an advantage. Maybe I’m being naive about it but expecting that a 17 or 18 year old really knows what they want to do (and locking them into a major in such a broad field) is a bit much.
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