<p>Can anyone add some information on this: Arizona State University has more 'National merit finalists' than other universities? Is it still true?
To qualify for the National Merit Finalist Scholarship What are the steps involved: I read that Applicant must be identified as a National Merit Finalist and have designated ASU as his or her first choice to the National Merit Corporation.
What happens if you designate ASU as a second choice - does it disqualify you for National merit scholarship?
Is the scholarship still at $17000/ year for out-of-state students and $12,000/year for in-state students?
How is the National merit scholarship different from ASU's AIMS scholarship?</p>
<p>[New</a> American University Scholarship – National Scholars | Arizona State University](<a href=“http://students.asu.edu/nationalscholars]New”>http://students.asu.edu/nationalscholars)
</p>
<p>ASU at one time was actively soliciting NMF’s for bragging rights with very good scholarships ($15,000 in state and $25,000 out of state). In 2010, this year, they changed it to $11,000 in state and $17,000 out of state with the promise of need based component. They are not the most competitive anymore with University of Arizona still staying on the old scale and University of Alabama etc. giving better scholarships. So if you are out of state, U of Arizona may be a better bet than ASU.</p>
<p>The AIMS scholarships as I understand is only for in-state students and covers only the tuition and fees which is about $8000. It is based on the AIMS test and you need to meet the critieria. If you are in-state and qualify for NMF, then that is a better scholarship than AIMS. AIMS is also known as Regents High Honors.</p>
<p>[New</a> American University Scholarship – Regents High Honors Endorsement Scholarship (AIMS) | Arizona State University](<a href=“http://students.asu.edu/scholarships/aims]New”>http://students.asu.edu/scholarships/aims)</p>
<p>I am going to assume (and I do not have any data to support that) that the number of NMF’s at ASU will decrease as their scholarships have gone down. I think ASU made the assumption that the Barret Honors College will continue to draw NMF’s as the same level previously, even with lower aid and I would like to see some data that was indeed the case.</p>
<p>As far as how to apply, what are your PSAT scores and what state are you in. You need to first qualify for becoming a NMF and then someone could provide more advice on this forum on what the next steps are.</p>
<p>Thanks for the posts! PSAT Score 223. Asking for a friend in AZ who has chosen ASU over U of A.
If she applies to U of A can she still expect to get the merit scholarship, even if it is not listed as her first choice?</p>
<p>A NMF can change the first choice school they put down on their application by the end of May after senior year. Your friend should receive many, many offers from different schools for being a potential NMF. She can accept any of them and then notify National Merit Corp by the deadline. She will receive a letter in the mail with a post card for her to return if she changes her school of choice.</p>
<p>I don’t know how true that statement is that ASU has more NMFs than any other state university.</p>
<p>Certainly public schools like Berkeley, UCLA, Virginia, Penn St, Michigan, UIUC, and Purdue have plenty of NMFs…even if they don’t give big merit scholarships to NMF.</p>
<p>Oklahoma and Alabama have a lot of NMFs - Bama reports having over 550 national scholars on campus and Oklahoma has similar high numbers.</p>
<p>And, no one probably has more NMFs than the ivies do.</p>
<p>Harvard in fact has the most NMF’s. </p>
<p>This is a CC post on NMF (National Merit Finalists or NMF) in different schools in 2007, where ASU is pretty low down the list of MMF’s. </p>
<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/454412-national-merit-scholars-2007-schools-have-most.html[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/454412-national-merit-scholars-2007-schools-have-most.html</a></p>
<p>However This seems to conflict with this announcement on the ASU site where they claim they had the 4th highest National Merit Scholars (NMS) in 2004 and they were continuing to actively recruit NMF’s for the Barrett Honors college in 2007.</p>
<p>[ASU</a> ranks 4th in nation for freshman National Merit Scholars](<a href=“http://www.asu.edu/feature/includes/spring05/readmore/nationalmerit.html]ASU”>ASU ranks 4th in nation for freshman National Merit Scholars)</p>
<p>The reason for this mismatch is the difference between NMF and NMS. Looking at the 2007 list.</p>
<p>number of NMS recipients not sponsored by school itself, total NMS recipients, number of NMS recipients sponsored by the school, name of school
285 285 0 Harvard College
183 183 0 Yale University
179 179 0 Princeton University
164 164 0 Stanford University
138 138 0 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
.
.
23 150 127 Arizona State University </p>
<p>In 2007, Harvard has 285 NMF’s and they gave no NMF scholarships. So out of the 285 NMF’s, some may have got money from other places (NMSC, Corporations), others got nothing but they are still NMF and it counts in the NMF total.</p>
<p>For ASU, there were 150 NMF’s, of which 23 either did not get NM scholarships or got it from an outside source and 127 got scholarships from ASU it self. So I am going to hazard a guess that ASU had 150 NM Scholarship Winners and 150 National Merit Finalists i.e. everyone got a NM Scholarship if they were NMF. In other words they had 150 NMF and 150 NMS. Harvard on the other hand may have 285 National Merit Finalists but (just pulling a number out of my hat) only 80 were National Merit Scholarship Winners. So they had 80 students who got some money (hence Scholarship winners) but 285 NMF’s i.e. 205 people got no money or 285 NMF and 80 NMS. (Please remember this 80 is made up number and I would think it is even lower).</p>
<p>So, who ranks highest depends on your metric. If the the metric is “Number of National Merit Finalists”, the Ivy’s rank much higher than most other schools.</p>
<p>If the metric is “Number of National Merit Scholarship Winners”, schools like ASU and UT Austin used to rank higher as they gave a lot of the scholarships. National Merit Scholarship winners is a subset of National Merit Finalists. Only about half the NMF’s (about 8000 out of 16000) get official NMF scholarships (not the add ons) and most of those are from schools. </p>
<p>I know this sounds a little confusing, but you have to be clear what you are measuring: Number of Finalists or Number of Winners and you will get different answers based on that metric.</p>
<p>ASU is now cutting back on NM Scholarships, so I will guess that they will loose on both counts: NMF’s and NMS.</p>
<p>The above numbers are old and may be for incoming freshmen only - not total at the school.</p>
<p>I wonder if anyone has a more current list. I know that Bama now is in the top 10 for public schools that have NMFs</p>
<p>^^^^^True this is 2007 data and 2010 data is going to look different as far as National Merit Scholars is concerned. I am not sure that there is going to be much change as far as National Merit Finalists is concerned, HYPMS are still likely to have a large number of NMF’s, though some changes will happen.</p>
<p>Not sure how to get a hold of that data. And they are for incoming freshman.</p>
<p>Just to clarify, there isn’t any data available anywhere that I’m aware of which shows where NMFs attended college. The data which was linked to in earlier posts shows the number of National Merit **Scholars<a href=“the%20ones%20with%20monetary%20awards”>/b</a> attending various schools, and the comparison is to whether the scholarship was sponsored by the school or not.</p>
<p>This data comes from the NMSC annual report (latest below), available on their website. Look at pages 33-35. For this period, ASU was behind Harvard, Northwestern, Texas, Yale, USC, Washington U, Chicago, Princeton, Oklahoma, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, North Carolina, and Rice. A total of 8511 NM Scholars enrolled at 360 different institutions.</p>
<p>[National</a> Merit Scholarship Corporation 2008-09 Annual Report](<a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf]National”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf)</p>
<p>Thanks for that link, very interesting. So Harvard has 266 scholars plus an unknown number of NMF’s. OK ASU down the list.</p>
<p>I would believe that ASU and UT Austin will go down this year as they have cut down on the number of awards they give.</p>
<p>Since that is the 2008-2009 report, I have a hard time believing that these are the numbers from last Fall’s frosh class.</p>
<p>Bama shows 95, but Bama reports that last fall it had 109 scholars. Not a huge difference, but 14 more is about 15% more.</p>
<p>^^^^^^ Were any on them students who joined later. This would only include those who officially were notified by U of Alabama. I know this year that some students were given all the goodies given to NMS after the deadline based on your postings. Did that happen last year and that could account for some of the difference.</p>
<p>The 2008-2009 report is the one for the class of 2009 and it is a list for only kids who received money (corporate, NM, or university).</p>
<p>I think the Arizona State figure must be for state universities.</p>
<p>Consider that the median SAT scores at HYP are around 2240, which roughly corresponds to a 224 PSAT. That would exceed the NMF cutoff score of all 50 states.</p>
<p>^^^</p>
<p>Yes, but many kids who score high on the SAT or ACT, don’t necessarily score high on the PSAT. I know many kids with 34/35/36 ACTs and 2250+ SATs that didn’t score high enough on the PSAT. </p>
<p>Maze…that may be the reason. I don’t know. It just seems odd that their would be a difference of 14 kids.</p>
<p>I think Oklahoma has a lot. They offer a lot of money to finalists</p>
<p>^^^ Oklahoma had 196 winners of which 164 were sponsored by the University. They are high but Harvard has the highest.</p>