A Historical perspective: Ivy SAT rankings in 1966

<p>^^^^ Duke is not an ivy, and we do not care.</p>

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the University of Florida is the second school in the country with the highest number of NM Scholars, after Havard

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<p>MovieBuff: Do you mean percentage or number? Since I could see Florida having a lot of NM Scholars (for the fact that it is a pretty smart school with a LOT of kids), but not a percentage as high of Harvard..</p>

<p>I think percentage is a better way to rank schools...</p>

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Dartmouth is very standardized test focused when it comes to choosing who to accept

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<p>I'd say Duke is one of the most test-focused non-technical schools that I've seen.</p>

<p>MovieBuff : ^^^^ Duke is not an ivy, and we do not care.</p>

<p>Just because a school is not technically an ivy does not mean that it is completely irrelevant to discussion. Duke is almost certainly a school of equal stature and quality as Brown or any one of the other ivies. Including schools such as Duke (or Stanford or w/e else) just widens our perspective on the whole admissions process--I would consider that a positive thing, wouldn't you?</p>

<p>by the way, I was just on the collegeboard website, and i looked up the scores of the middle 50% of students at the ivies. different results from those posterx put up earlier, but i don't feel like typing out all those numbers, so i'll just put the ivies in order from high to low. </p>

<p>Yale = Harvard (hope that makes your day posterx :) )
Princeton
Dartmouth
Brown
Columbia
UPenn
Cornell</p>

<p>The degree to which posterx considers statistics to be valid is directly proportional to the degree to which they make Yale look #1.</p>

<p>Also, posterx doesn't even go to yale. tres sad.</p>

<p>smv, agree with you ( i was just being an ass playing along with johnwesley earlier..lol)</p>

<p>posterx does not go to yale??......</p>

<p>CoolaTroopa, you are right. I was referring to the number. University of Florida always get the second largest number of Merit Scholars, after Harvard.</p>

<p>^^lol, its hard to tell over the internet sometimes...</p>

<p>"Also, if i recall correctly, the University of Florida is the second school in the country with the highest number of NM Scholars, after Havard." </p>

<p>I'm only counting NMSC-sponsored NM scholars ("%NMSC") - the true cream of the cream of the crop, and top 2,500 or so of all the students in the United States. You can't count ALL scholars, obviously, because some schools (Florida, Texas, and others) sponsor them while others do not. By counting just %NMSC, you get a very good picture of where the most elite students in the country are going.</p>

<p>posterx, I believe you are distorting this information considerably.</p>

<p>1.- The goal of the National Merit Program is to reach Finalist status. That is the GOAL of the program. (8 200 students ) That is the "true cream of the cream". Call them up. They will tell you.
2.- The Merit Sponsored Awards that you are referring to , have nothing to do with being "cream of the cream", but rather:
a) Corporate sponsors designate their awards for children of their employees or members, for residents of a community where a company has operations, or for Finalists with career plans the sponsor wishes to encourage. These scholarships may either be renewable for four years of undergraduate study or one-time awards.</p>

<p>OR</p>

<p>b) Officials of each "sponsor college" select winners of their awards from Finalists who have been accepted for admission and have informed NMSC by the published deadlines that the sponsor college or university is their first choice. These awards are renewable for up to four years of undergraduate study. The published deadlines for reporting a sponsor college as first choice can be viewed on page 3 of the leaflet .</p>

<p>This is actually where the "bribing" of the students comes in. The University of Florida attracts a greater number than (Yale, yes... Yale ) because of the tons of money that they throw at these kids. Harvard is the number one in number of Merit Scholars just because is... Harvard ( they do not give any award money, and they DO NOT have "NMSC-sponsored scholars" by the college. If they did, i would have found out, I am one of them and none of the ivies I got accepted to were able to offer any.</p>

<p>Also, some kids are still in Semifinalist status by the time they are offered admission ( if they applied ED/EA ). No way they would know if they made the last cut.</p>

<p>You really have no idea what you are talking about now with this NMSC thing.</p>

<p>there's actually no contradiction between what the two of you are saying; posterx is referring to the non-bribed finalists (2,500) while it sounds as if you are referring to all the finalists (the 8,200). It sounds as if the overwhelming majority of finalists receive some sort of school sponsored or sponsor-sponsored award while a tiny number are drawn to certain need-based colleges with sufficient prestige that there is no need to sweeten the pot, as it were, in order to get them to enroll. Isn't that what we are talking about?</p>

<p>No, the 2,500 NMSC recipients get a special award only reserved for the very best. The other people get sponsored only if they choose to apply to or attend a particular place.</p>

<p>posterx, there is NO special award reserved for the "very best". The "very best" are the 8 200 who are the FINALISTS who reached the goal of the program. That is the reward.</p>

<p>I am one of those few who got awarded a $2500 sholarship based on other submissions ( an essay, recs, etc..) but this small group is not considered "the best of the best" and this group is not sponsored by anyone and this group is not exactly 2500 either!.</p>

<p>Furthermore, just like I said before, by the time this scholarship is given (to the "select group" you seem to be referring to) we have already been accepted to the school of our choice. The schools have no way of knowing who is getting this award at the time they are making their offers for admission, because at that time, most of us were just SEMIFINALISTS!</p>

<p>Your post #16 makes completely false conclusions.</p>

<p>Do you get it now, johnwesley?</p>

<p>From the website:</p>

<p>"Only Finalists who notify NMSC by the published deadlines of their plans to attend a sponsor institution are considered for college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards."</p>

<p>Sorry, but those Merit Scholars aren't nearly as elite as the 2,500 or so students (a slightly different # each year) who win the outright NMSC-sponsored scholarships. To get the NMSC-sponsored scholarship you basically need to be a perfect student - the "cream of the cream". To be any old merit scholar, you just need to be good enough to be a Finalist (which 15,000 students are) and then apply to a particular school. </p>

<p>In other words, just 2,500 or so students nationwide are good enough to be NMSC-sponsored scholars -- which is why that is used as a measure of selectivity -- while 15,000 students nationwide are good enough to be a Finalist and therefore a scholar if they happen to apply to the right school or be in the right community.</p>

<p>The "cream of the cream of the crop" 2,500 or so winners of the NMSC-sponsored award according to the website "are selected without consideration of family financial circumstances, college choice, or major and career plans." Not true of the others.</p>

<p>but, posterx, what about moviebuff's point that these 2,500 chosen ones do not know their status (as "cream of the cream") until <em>after</em> they've been admitted to the college of their choice?</p>

<p>I don't see how that contradicts the widely-held reasoning why ONLY the 2,500 or so NMSC-sponsored winners would be considered the "cream of the cream" and thus used as the ultimate measure of selectivity -- in terms of measuring who is getting the <em>very</em> best!</p>

<p>posterx..you are really losing it on this!!! LOL. Now, I am beginning to see why they say here (so much) that you are a master at manipulating information!!</p>

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"Only Finalists who notify NMSC by the published deadlines of their plans to attend a sponsor institution are considered for college-sponsored Merit Scholarship awards."

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<p>The students who get the $2500.00 from NMSC are not ranked any different than the FINALISTS ( which by the way, from the 15 000, ONLY 8 200 are offered the three different financial "sponsored" awards ) The FINALISTS represent less than 1% of the highest scoring high school students in the country ( out of 1.3 million ) for that particular year. Are these what you are calling "any old merit scholar"??</p>

<p>The students that get the $2500 one time award, are selected on the basis of their application essay and school recs... There is NO DISTICNTION MADE ANYWHERE BETWEEN THESE STUDENTS AND THE FINALISTS OTHER THAN THE FACT THAT THIS SMALL GROUP GETS THE $ 2500.00 !!!! They do not have more money to give so the three "sponsored" awards together (corporate, college and the one that you keep referring to) are given to 8200 of the 15000. They make sure that if the college you listed to attend does not participate (ivies) or if you do not have Corporate parentsm etc...then..they throw you into your infamous 2500 pile. It is almost luck and random and certainly NO "cream of the cream of the crop"</p>

<p>And AGAIN, you find that out in MAY!!!!!!</p>

<p>Do you get that? I am one of them for Christ's sake. I have the papers !!!!</p>

<p>posterx
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and thus used as the ultimate measure of selectivity -- in terms of measuring who is getting the <em>very</em> best!

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<p>It can not be a measure of selectivity ( the way you have used it to rank the schools as of to % of NMSC ) because the schools DO NOT know that fact when they offer acceptance to the students. PERIOD</p>

<p>It's not about the money, it's about which students are truly the best. What you call the "small group" consists of the best students. The others are picked out of the 15,000 "Finalists" and given awards based on factors other than pure merit -- as the website above indicates.</p>

<p>It's not a direct measure of "selectivity", per se, perhaps, but it is a measure of where the best of the best choose to attend. An alternate measure would be finding out where the Intel finalists have chosen to attend over the past few years. Just because many are given the Intel award AFTER they get in and choose where to attend doesn't mean it isn't a good measure of selectivity. Again, it's a measure of where the best of the best of the best students go. And, like the %NMSC-sponsored, you don't get an Intel award based on where you choose to attend.</p>

<p>I've been through the process too, and know dozens of NMSC-sponsored Merit Scholars, College-sponsored Merit Scholars, Merit Finalists, and Merit Semifinalists. Trust me, the "best of the best" are the NMSC-sponsored scholars. The %NMSC students had perfect or near-perfect test scores and were valedictorians. The other "merit scholars" had scores in the 1300s or 1400s and weren't in the top 10 in their class.</p>

<p>I hope that explains why %NMSC is widely-used as the premiere measure of where the "cream of the cream" go to college.</p>

<p>IF I'm understanding this correctly (and that's a big <em>if</em>) you are both talking about the same thing but choosing to spin it differently. It sounds as though the 2,500 that receive an award directly from NMSC may be getting it as a consolation prize, not because they are any different, or more <em>meritorious</em> than the other finalists (Moviebuff's point). OTOH, posterx raises a legitimate point that it would appear, more often than not, that these consolation prize winners overwhelmingly tend to choose Ivies to matriculate and that in itself is a hermeneutic of the prestige and drawing power of these institutions -- because without institutional money there is ostensibly no other draw (all else being equal) that would cause them to go there.</p>

<p>I think if he had left the argument there, he would be on solid ground. But, he then goes on to push it, causing it to become a tad circular: 1) the Ivies are the cream of the crop, 2) therefore Ivy NMS finalists must be the cream of the crop, too, and, 3) hey if all of those cream of the crop NMS finalists are enrolling in the Ivies, then, 4) the Ivies must be the cream of the crop, and so on and so on and so on -- causing the premise to collapse on itself.</p>

<p>That IMHO, is the problem.</p>

<p>I think it's enough to say that College X does not award instituional funds to NMS finalists and allow people to draw their own conclusions.</p>