I know this is kind of a silly question, but it has risen in my head and I can't stop thinking about the possibility of this happening. Is it possible for some person other than my teacher to take the identity of the teacher and send a nomination to people of their own choosing? I looked at the online nomination form and it says something about having a "Nominator ID"... are the teachers required to have it to nominate people? If they were not, it would be really easy for someone to just send in a bunch of fake nominations.

This is a serious question. I ask it because I was nominated and my teacher hasn't told me she did it, I don't have the guts to ask, and if I did ask it would be very awkward if by some chance it was fake. There's just the possibility in my head that this is some kind of a prank by one of the other students and he/she is trying to distract me from learning. I qualify exceptionally well to go to this forum, but I don't want to waste time planning to go if I was not actually nominated by my teacher.

I had the same question when I recieved the letter in the mail. It didn't say who nominated me, all I know is it was somebody from my old school which I don't even go to anymore. It was very random so I wasn't sure if it was legit or not. But my mom called the forum and got information about it just to make sure I could actually do it. Whether a teacher nominated you or it was just some dumb kid, you were still nominated, and this is really a once and a life time opportunity. No matter who it was, it's a really amazing chance for you and I think you should go for it.

They send "nomination" letters to people who meet certain criteria in a nation wide database...pretty much the same way you get all those college letters. SOme teachers definitely do send in nominations. You may be nominated based off of a score on a national test like the PSAT or something...I'm pretty sure they have a ways to tell if nominations are fake.

It really is an amazing opportunity. Definitely attend!!

I wanted to know the same thing . . . as a parent. How can it be based on academic merit when my daughter scored in the 36% on the PSAT? She has a 3.0 GPA but her test scores present more of a problem---not a reason to nominate her.

I bet your daughter is smart and they know she has potential in this field

Teachers/administrators are NOT ALLOWED to give out ANY personal information about a student TO ANYBODY. Therefore, no, you were not really "nominated." Rather, you were selected from a mailing list similar to the one mentioned in the post by anna_banana_2010. I got all sorts of summer program invitations after I released my PSAT scores on CollegeBoard.com
I'm not trying to say you're not special or whatever but I just want to inform you of how you received a letter or e-mail (what I got). This appears to be a great opportunity. I had to choose between this and about 5 other summer programs but, because this one is being held at UCLA (my dream school), I chose this one. I'm going to the last session at UCLA. Hope to see some of you there!

Hope I helped

actually, teachers and administrators are allowed to nominate students. my history teacher has nominated lots of students. there are just certain restrictions on what info they give out when they nominate you. so you may be nominated by a teacher or from a national test score. if you noticed on the nylf home page there is a part where it asks teachers and mentors to nominate people...why would they do that if they weren't allowed to?