National Hispanic Recognition Program

September 18 Update NHRP certificates   for the class of 2019 were mailed directly to students last week. Recognized students should be receiving letters shortly. Applicants who failed to qualify will be (or have been) notified by email. If you have questions, the best contact is Scholars Apply, which administers the program for College Board. The phone number is 866-545-8467. The email is nhrp@scholarshipamerica.org. The National Hispanic Recognition Program  recognizes approximately 5,000 Hispanic/Latino juniors each year from among the more than 400,000 juniors who take the PSAT. As with the National Merit Scholarship Program, NHRP uses the junior year PSAT/NMSQT as the qualifying test. The programs, however, differ significantly. NHRP is administered directly by College Board and Scholarship America. National Merit is run by National Merit Scholarship Corporation. NHRP sets qualifying levels regionally (see below for details). National Merit sets qualifying levels by state. NHRP recognition requires a minimum 3.5 GPA. National Merit does not consider student GPA until the Finalist portion of the competition. NHRP does not directly include any financial awards or scholarships. National Merit does offer scholarships. In the case of both programs, colleges may have their own awards based on student status. NHRP, for example, is an entrance path for Boston University’s Presidential Scholarship. Students with qualifying PSAT scores are notified of NHRP eligibility in February of junior year. Certificate recipients are notified in September of senior year. National Merit Semifinalist and Commended Students do not learn of their status until September of senior year. NHRP is open only to students who are least one-quarter Hispanic/Latino. NHRP recognition does not impact National Merit status. Students can be recognized by both programs. Initial consideration is automatic for juniors taking the PSAT/NMSQT who have identified as Hispanic/Latino on the PSAT answer sheet. Students meeting the qualifying score requirements will be invited to complete an application and confirm their GPAs with documentation from their high schools. Students who are not already identified as Hispanic/Latino may self-nominate. Contact Scholarship America at NHRP@scholarshipamerica.org for details. College Board does not publish a public list of cutoffs. Compass has gathered known cutoffs, by region, for the new PSAT. The actual class of 2017 cutoffs were based on National Merits Selection Index, where ERW scores have twice the weight of Math scores. The Total Scores for the class of 2017 have been estimated to provide comparison. [April 10 update: We have learned that the New England cutoff was 1310 for the class of 2019.] NHRP cutoffs have been relatively stable on the new PSAT, and we expect the same moving forward. The number of Hispanic/Latino students taking the PSAT/NMSQT has grown tremendously over the last 10 years, but score movement at the top end of the range has been slow. Recognized students are from the United States, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Mariana Islands, and the Marshall Islands or are citizens studying abroad. We believe that the regions correspond to those the College Board uses for its regional offices.