Yea, Kevin had a day….the first photo isn’t all that great, it is what Kevin texted us during school and I didn’t bother waiting for him to turn over the actual paper to scan in….
so that was this morning; this letter arrived in the mail this afternoon.
So…what does all of this(!) mean?
Let’s take the first one….a few quotes from some news articles found on the web today…
“About 1.5 million juniors in more than 22,000 high schools entered the 2014 scholarship program by taking the 2012 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test. From that number, the list narrowed to 16,000 semifinalists, according to the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC)”
“Semifinalists must now submit applications that include information about their academic records, participation in school and community activities, leadership abilities, employment, honors and awards. They must also gain the recommendation of a high school official, write an essay and achieve SAT scores in line with their qualifying scores.”
So, we will see how all this turns out! Some schools are very generous with financial aid for national merit finalists (and semifinalists!). And it doesn’t seem like much of a stretch to think Kevin will make that step; it is more confirmation than anything else….and it looks like he achieved the confirmation SAT score last May when he took the test last May.
How generous? Well, here’s three examples…
NMF: National Merit Finalist
NMSF: National Merit Semi-Finalist
University of Alabama
NMSF Award: Full Tuition (NMSF + 3.5 GPA required)
NMF Award: Full Tuition + 1 year housing + $1,000/year + $2,000 exp + iPad
University of Central Florida
NMF Award: Full Ride ($36,000/year + departmental benefit)
University of Nevada – Las Vegas
NMF Award: Full Ride + study abroad
And the second one? Wrote this earlier but it died in the loss of that back-to-school rough draft….Kevin has done very well on his AP tests. Told him any frustration with his B/B+ in AP Stats last year would be completely replaced with a ‘5’ on the test….and he got a 5 on the test. He’s also gotten ‘5’’s on AP US History and AP World History….three ‘5’s gets you recognition as an AP Scholar.
Kevin is taking four(?) more AP tests this year (he plans on self-studying for two…he is taking AP Literature and AP Government and will self-study one of the AP Econ’s and AP European History.
You may ask why no AP German? Kevin doesn’t think that the coursework at school will leave him prepared enough to take the test….which I think is strange in many ways but am not choosing to argue with him about. He plans on taking whatever test the college he goes to administers to place out of whatever German he can…..
Quite a day!
