Deceiving Lists Of Schools Enrolling Most National Merit Scholars

Paying for College
1

Out of 15,000 National Merit Finalists, who becomes National Merit Scholar?

  1. Ones who are chosen/sponsored by National Merit Foundation itself as Scholars and given scholarship.
  2. Finalists who get sponsorship money from their parent’s participating employers to qualify to become Scholars.
  3. Finalists who pick participating colleges to sponsor them with scholarship money to qualify to become Scholars.

All other finalists who pick selective colleges without sponsorship scholarships and don’t have parents working for sponsoring employers, doesn’t get Scholar designation.

This tells you about uselessness of lists boasting high number of scholars, most top schools get more finalists but unless those finalists are among 2,500 chosen ones by foundation or have a parent employer as sponsor, they can’t become scholars as mentioned on those lists. Non sponsoring schools like Harvard, MIT, Amherst and Rice etc probably get higher numbers then UF, UTD, UA type schools no matter what these lists show.

2

Ummm, yes. But I m not sure what the issue is.

NMF status can be a great factor for admissions and getting money at certain schools. Others, like the most adjective schools, it means little or nothing.

One year Harvard accepted 9 kids from one of my kids’ school. Three were NMF. All 3 , I believe got NMS status through the Foundation itself, and got one time $2k scholarship awards. A drop in the bucket in terms of Harvard’s COA.

The National Merit Foundation has lost a lot of its luster these days as their keystone scholarship is really so small these days relative to college costs. In my day, it was a nice award to get that first year. They simply did not up the awards as costs went up.

Also selective schools, increasingly stopped sponsoring finalists. My college, my brother’s college used to come up with full rides or tuition for NMFs. No more. If you happen to make Finalist status, fine, but most of the kids getting the rare hefty merit money from those two schools are not NMFs and the AOs are not particularly hot on the status. It means kid did really well on PSATs and then SATs is all, is what one AI said, and they could not care less what applicants did in their PSATs. They can see the SAT em results themselves and have more personalized to the school factors they seek.

It’s still quite the prize to get Finalisr status because it opens up a venue to getting some big merit money, something increasingly hard to get these days.

3

Agreed if money was the only priority, every National Merit Finalist can become Scholar
at some college but it’s important how some colleges deceivingly flaunt those lists. Obviously, you are investing money in making finalists scholars. Selective colleges have twice as many finalists but don’t claim higher numbers since they aren’t buying them scholar status. Even finalist ones who receive lots of financial aid scholarship, can’t be claimed as scholars.

4

You are mistaken. If a National Merit Finalist receives a scholarship from a college sponsor, that student becomes a National Merit Scholar.

The 2,500 that are selected by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation are designated “National Merit Achievement Scholars”

From the National Merit Corporation website (the bold font is mine):

5

‘’ This tells you about uselessness of lists boasting high number of scholars, most top schools get more finalists but unless those finalists are among 2,500 chosen ones by foundation or have a parent employer as sponsor, they can’t become scholars as mentioned on those lists.“”

I haven’t seen lists boasting the number of “scholars,” I don’t think. I think Ive seen lists boasting the number of NMFs. What are you seeing?