I spoke with someone from NHSC just now to inquire more about how they would determine who would receive the award!
First of all, they say at this point all the finalists "passed" their screening process or met their selection criteria
(Pheewwww)! It was based on transcript, essays, LOR (letter of recommendations), etc
and, to my surprise, we were all ranked (so I heard). The next phase in determining who gets the award depends on how much $ that congress allocates to NHSC. If congress funds their requested budget proposal for the scholarship, all of us who complied with their email would get the award.
If not (worst case senario), they would determine how many people would get the scholarship based on the money congress allocates them. Then, they would use the ranked list as described above! My feeling while talking to them is that if a "finalist" does not get the scholarship, don't blame us, blame congress!!
Well, it all makes sense now!!!!! However, I am still confused about 2 things though:
1) What about those who receive the late finalist notification email. Were they originally wait-listed as we have postulated? or were they the original finalists, just like we were, but due to whatever reasons (i.e., computer glitches), they did not receive the notification until about 1 1/2 week later?? Please opine!
2) When do congress approve federal budget? Generally, a
federal budget for FY2011 should be approved/begin on Oct, 2010; if approved, the fund should have been processed by Nov 2010. If that's the case, shouldn't NHSC administrators already know how much money they have for this year?
Or do they lump us in their FY2012 budget proposal? That is, based on the number of finalists they have, they would formulate their budget! Then, pass this number to some congressional aides on the appropriations committee to anticipate whether or not they would get the funding come October. If they get a positive review, they could go ahead and award
all of us the scholarship. If not, they would cut down on the scholarship recipient based on the number agreed upon.
I think my latter theory makes sense since based on the past NHSC threads, everyone received their award money the first week of
November. If that's the case, NHSC would lump us in the in their FY2012 budget. Again, what say you??