The winners of the NM Scholarship are awarded to those who have not already accepted a college or corporate award. So, it the ‘best’ candidates already accepted an award, the ‘NM’ award would be the next 8500 or so Finalists. It is mostly about test scores, confirmed by grades and tweaked for regional and demographic reasons. ECs mean nothing, but teacher recommendations do matter. It really makes no difference in life to get name NMS one method or another. In fact, the worst way is to get the NM award because it is for considerably less money than most college or corporate driven awards.
Like Mom2collegekids mentioned…they are all NMS. Don’t get caught up in the false narrative that someone some NMS are ‘better’ than others.