Top students who achieve NMF or equivalent status have a choice between full scholarships at state honors colleges or paying far more for “more prestigious” schools. For Alabama, I am curious if there is any statistically significant slant to who chooses the honors college versus their other, more expensive, options. Does anyone know percentages for the majors by NMF students at UA—engineers versus other STEM majors (including pre-med types) versus humanities majors, for example?
Hopefully someone can chime in on the stats information for you. My NMF son who went to UA was my second who became a National Merit Scholar. As such I had already “researched” all the schools who offered scholarships, and my 1st son applied to every place he wanted to go (he ended up at a reciprocity state school with a full-tuition + scholarship.) When my 2nd NMSF started at looking at colleges I pointed him to schools we could afford so although he might have been able to get in those “higher prestige” schools he didn’t apply to any except MIT (which as one of the thousands of white males applying did not get in.) After visiting UA he was hooked. He ended up graduating in December 2015 after 3-1/2 years with both his undergrad and masters in CS. His class I believe had 241 NMF scholars. Their majors were across the board - engineering, business, humanities etc. Like all student bodies, NMFs have many interests and talents.
While you might find NMFs in a number of majors, they do tend to concentrate in about 12 majors…eng’g, math, chem, bio, the Classics, Finance, Econ, physics, English, French, and a small number of others.
@mom2collegekids, does UA release the names of their new class of NM Scholars each year in a press release?
@mom2collegekids French? That is very interesting - wonder why. Would have never guessed that. Also I’d love to see the breakdown. Can you point me to where you found that? I’d love to see where they call came from as well. Does it show that? Thanks!
@collegework, I think @mom2collegekids is guessing based on years of observation. There is no official breakdown, I don’t believe. That’s why I was wondering if there was a press release announcing all the recipients and their intended majors.
The Honors College used to annually put out a breakdown of the majors of the students in the honors college. It was obvious that the honor students we’re mostly concentrated within a smallish number majors. Since the national merit finalist are automatically in the honors college, it’s fair to say that their distribution is the same.