My son got one from Fordham 2 weeks ago so I assume the “list” must be sent to colleges earlier. He only got it from Fordham but there have been a crazy amount of emails from Case Western (we are in CA and he has not been told officially that he is a NMSF yet but his score is above the reported cut off
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I assume you didnt opt out of the email communications. We opted out since our D was getting tons of spam emails from schools.
Shouldve listened to advice to create a separate Gmail just for college applications.
We did, and still opted out. Its hard enough to keep up with the schools we are already interested in learning about.
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MD parent here and wondering the same. I replied to the Compass comment hoping for some clarity and an update to their main post. He reconfirmed the 221 cutoff for MD in his reply but hasn’t updated the master list. I pinged my child’s school to see if they could dig up the notice…
Keep us posted. I saw that comment. Twice he confirmed the score but hasn’t updated the states nor the blog.
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Starting sometime in October, Alabama will offer a waiver.
I think the correlation between pushing kids and higher test scores is much lower than you might think. We have two kids, both with SSIs that would have earned them NMSF anywhere in the country in their respective years, and we never pushed them. In fact, we encourage them to live in the moment while doing their best. We are much closer to the Wyoming mindset than the ones in the large urban areas that you mentioned. Entering the rat race never ends well, and I discourage my kids from comparing themselves to others at all costs. It doesn’t make them achieve more; it simply makes them dissatisfied with what they have achieved.
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That’s great that’s been the situation with your kids, and you are definitely right that there are students who will score high without being heavily pushed. I recall an individual whose son got a 35 on the ACT but whose GPA was in the 3.0-3.4 range. Not all high-scorers are overachievers in all areas or have significant pushing from parents. And there are students who are overachievers in all areas and it comes entirely from their own intrinsic motivation.
The existence of these other types of individuals does not, however, mean that there are not a good number of students who are pushed, whether a little or a lot, and that can also contribute to higher NMSF scores in certain areas with a higher concentration of prodding parents.
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Bama is free to apply the week of October 16 but only through their application. It’s not free if you apply via the Common App.
List has been updated to reflect MD at 221
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With MA also in, I don’t think there can be any surprises, right?
What’s the best way to see how many NMF/NMSF are at a university?
I’d likely find a list. I found one from 2019. Then you can look up the schools individually. Just google the name plus national merit.
Tulsa’s president posts on here and says 25% of enrollees are scholars. Makes sense with the full ride.
Alabama supposedly has the most.
UTD ahd Maine have great offers. Fordham and USC for private.
I’ve attached a list at the bottom (the wikipedia) but it’s four years old and things change. For example, UF no longer makes the cut.
TU reports most National Merit scholars per capita for fall 2023 - The University of Tulsa.
What should be a simple question to answer isn’t that simple. Most of the low single digit acceptance schools don’t measure NMF attendance so “how many” is an elusive stat.
Based on the published statistics it is likely that super elite schools would have a guess of 50%+ of students be eligible as NMF if such things were tracked. These schools simply don’t care about NMF as they don’t need to advertise their ability to attract academically elite kids. It is also likely that many top 50 schools have meaningful percentages of kids that would have qualified had the school “kept score”.
At the schools that do track and market the leader is Tulsa who states that approximately 25% of their students are NMF. You also have Alabama that advertises “the most” NMF with approximately 1,100 but keep in mind this equates to just below 3% of the student body of 38,600. In this case “the most” is a relatively low percentage in relative terms but an effective marketing tool that offers qualified applicants a very real financial benefit.
If your question is a desire to quantify the academic environment based on the size of the NMF community you will unfortunately have to overlay some subjectivity.
For example at Tulsa on average 1 in 4 kids will be NMF, while even if in the 7,000+ honors college at Bama only 1 in 7 would be NMF while at Yale (and similar schools), the vast majority would have been NMF eligible. Really depends on what you are looking for and what your FA needs are.
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To add to this, it’s more likely that the lists you may find are probably comprised of schools that give scholarship money to NMFs. If a school doesn’t participate in that program they would have less need/interest in tracking or reporting those numbers.
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This may or may not be the case but the list from 2019 includes many heavyweights that don’t give aid. So not sure if this is a correct statement made. I wouldn’t conflate NM Scholars and high end institutions as tied together.
I would say - and the list has changed - UF, for example, gives $500 today whereas a Bama (supposedly #1) gives 5 years tuition including grad school, four years housing, $3500 a year and $2000 one time for a project. Many people chase the money and many Ivy accepted students are likely at these schools - frankly, even without the NMF and just based on regular merit. I’ve seen that with both kids and have met enough in places like Knoxville and Tampa to know many a kid turns down elite schools for whatever reason. Tulsa - with 25% of their students NMSF and getting free rides - not sure how they do it endowment wise (they were having credit rating issues) - but what a sweet deal at a FANTASTIC school - historically very respected. And if the list were current, they’d be on it. The one thing the list above doesn’t do - is adjust for size.
I think there’s a few things - obviously a Harvard as a % will have more than a URI or FSU or Alabama based on their overall profiles But there aren’t that many NM folks to begin with - so I wouldn’t assume many of a class are - nor would I assume that schools aren’t tracking for that, especially given the list below. Again, wish I had a current list for OP but I cannot find one and this one is third party tracked so hopefully accurate - but today, would be different - as UF wouldn’t likely be near the top.
| 1 | University of Florida | 270 | 231 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2 | University of Southern California | 265 | 206 |
| 3 | University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) | 258 | 210 |
| 4 | Northwestern University | 244 | 188 |
| 5 | University of Chicago | 233 | 174 |
| 6 | Vanderbilt University | 222 | 168 |
| 7 | Harvard University | 207 | 0 |
| 8 | University of Texas at Dallas | 200 | 173 |
| 9 | Texas A&M University, College Station | 188 | 144 |
| 10 | Northeastern University | 155 | 133 |
| 11 | Yale University | 140 | 0 |
| 12 | Arizona State University | 136 | 113 |
| 13 | Massachusetts Institute of Technology | 136 | 0 |
| 14 | University of California, Berkeley | 132 | 0 |
| 15 | University of Pennsylvania | 126 | 0 |
| 16 | Stanford University | 124 | 0 |
| 17 | Duke University | 119 | 0 |
| 18 | Purdue University (West Lafayette) | 116 | 101 |
| 19 | Princeton University | 114 | 0 |
| 20 | University of Minnesota, Twin Cities | 107 |
It’s difficult to answer this, for the following reasons:
- Colleges don’t report NMSFs, and the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (NMSC) doesn’t report where NMSFs end up.
- Colleges also don’t report NMFs, and the NMSC doesn’t report where NMFs end up.
- Many schools do report NMSs, and the NMSC does report where NMSs end up.
- However, not every NMF becomes a NMS; only ~8,000 of the 15,000 NMFs become NMSs.
- There are 2 “easy ways” and 1 “hard way” for NMFs to become NMSs.
- One “easy way” is the corporate-sponsored scholarships. Basically if you are a NMF and your parent works for a corporation that sponsors National Merit scholarships or if you live in the town where the corporation is located, you will receive one, and thus your status will change from NMF to NMS. This happens to ~1,100 students.
- The other “easy way” is the school-sponsored scholarships. Basically, if you are a NMF and you choose a college that gives National Merit scholarships to all of its admitted NMFs, you will receive one, and thus your status will change from NMF to NMS. This happens to ~4,600 students.
- The “hard way” for a NMF to become a NMS is to win a scholarship directly from the NMSC. This is hard, because this honor is not random, it is given only to the top NMFs from each state based on a holistic evaluation. This happens to 2,500 students.
- The Ivys and MIT do not grant any school-sponsored National Merit scholarships. Therefore if a NMF matriculates at Harvard, the only way for her to go from NMF to NMS status is to receive a corporate-sponsored National Merit scholarship (“easy” but there are only ~1,100 of these) or a National Merit scholarship directly from NMSC (“hard” and only the top 2,500 NMFs earn this honor.)
- According to the link above, in 2019 Harvard enrolled 207 NMSs, about 11% of its freshman class. Because Harvard doesn’t offer college-sponsored National Merit scholarships, all these NMSs either had corporate-sponsored scholarships or NMSC-sponsored scholarships (we don’t know what percentage of each.) How many NMSs could Harvard have had if it were to have given every one of its NMF matriculates a school-sponsored scholarship, thus changing their status from NMF to NMS? Only Harvard knows for sure, but we might estimate based on some other excellent schools like UChicago:
- According to the link above, University of Chicago enrolled 233 NMSs, also about 11% of its freshman class. But because UChicago does offer school-sponsored National Merit scholarships, it is not an apples-to-apples comparison. Of UChicago’s 233 NMSs, 174 of them received the school-sponsored National Merit scholarship, while 59 received either a corporation-sponsored or NMSC-sponsored scholarship. So UChicago has only 3% of its students with the same NMS statuses (corporation and direct NMSC) as Harvard has. So UChicago nearly quadruples its number of NMSs by giving school-sponsored National Merit scholarships.
- If Harvard also offered school-sponsored National Merit scholarships we can guess that it could also quadruple its number, leading to an estimated 828 NMSs, or over 40% of its freshman class. This percentage may even be higher because Harvard’s matriculants (on average) are stronger than UChicago’s matriculants.
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What are the columns on that 5 year old list?No clue, as not labelled, but no matter. Maybe # enrolled and # given by the school? And now that UF cut off the Benaquisto to OOS students the NMFs aren’t as pulled to UF for that reason.
Wow - that’s a lot - you’re really great at that. #12 is just a guess though - right.
I’ll read this again - very interesting.
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I think a lot of “assumptions” are best guess. I don’t know if Florida’s # would be lower today - but just assuming.
The wikipedia I took from states this - to answer your question:
The following lists universities that enrolled more than 100 National Merit Scholars for 2019 entering class according to the 2018-19 Annual Report of the National Merit Scholarship Corporation.
Obviously @fiftyfifty1 has an amazing grasp of the concepts involved - and really, the person asked for a list and it’s all I was trying to provide. I’m not sure kids are as PSAT focused (on average) as SAT focused, etc. Mine both took PSAT - I didn’t even know - there was no prep, etc. I suspect it’s often like this but can’t speak for others. So perhaps there’s more kids out there - if they’d been engaged earlier, would actually push up the #s? or how many 1570 SATs or 35.5 ACTs also qualified the year prior etc.? No idea - but I wonder if there’s a study.
Here is the actual official 2019 report - pulled from the same wikipedia page - and it looks like starting on page 40, it goes school by school - if that helps anyone.