“Freshman Class National Merit Scholar Numbers Released” (news item)

Colleges and Universities A-Z Princeton University
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<p>The</a> Chronicle of Higher Education</p>

<p>This week the National Merit Scholarship Corporation released the numbers of Scholars matriculating at universities across the country. </p>

<p>Nationally, Harvard enrolled the first year class with the highest percentage of National Merit Scholars. Princeton had the second highest. Yale, MIT and Stanford followed just a short distance behind. Within the Ivy League, Harvard obviously had the largest number of Scholars as well as the highest percentage for its freshman class but all the Ivies were well represented. </p>

<p>National Merit Scholars as Ranked By Percentage of Class of 2011</p>

<p>16.9%---Harvard
14.6%---Princeton
13.9%---Yale
5.4%-----Brown
4.8%-----UPenn
4.7%-----Dartmouth
4.6%-----Columbia
1.5%-----Cornell</p>

<p>National Merit Scholars in Absolute Numbers for Class of 2011</p>

<p>285----Harvard
183----Yale
179----Princeton
115----UPenn
80-----Brown
62-----Columbia
51-----Dartmouth
47-----Cornell</p>

<p>More information about the National Merit Scholarship Competition may be found here:</p>

<p>National</a> Merit Scholarship Corporation - National Merit Scholarship Corporation</p>

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<p>I note that Princeton has surpassed Yale in percentage of National Merit Scholars, and also that Penn did very well, adding 15 to their total last year of 100.</p>

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<p>Do they release the numbers for Semifinalists/Finalists in each class? If so, could someone post them? Thanks.</p>

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<p>what about intel semi-finalist. does that trump a national merit scholar?</p>

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<p>Seems that there are 3 distinct tiers</p>

<p>HYP</p>

<p>Brown Columbia Dartmouth Penn (alphabetical)</p>

<p>and then Cornell. Ouch.</p>

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<p>What, I thought everyone knew that :)</p>

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<p>This post may be misleading to some. There are many, many other colleges and universities with more NMS than those listed (except, I believe, Harvard). For example, Northwestern enrolled 249 scholars, University of Oklahoma 175. The entire list can be viewed on the national merit organization's annual report on its website.</p>

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<p>schools like NW and oklahoma increase their numbers of NMS'ers by anointing as scholars all finalists who choose to enroll. the numbers cited in the OP are for unanointed scholars only, those awarded the scholarship independent of their choice of school. for obvious reasons, this is a better metric of the schools' ability to attract top students.</p>

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<p>It may be "obvious" to you, f.scottie, but I still say the statement: "This week the National Merit Scholarship Corporation released the numbers of Scholars matriculating at universities across the country" could be misleading to some, especially those, like me, who are only among the "anointed" and not, apparently, a "top student." I keep forgetting only "top students" and Ivy-League hopefuls are supposed to be on CC. (by the way, as name indicates, I'm a parent-- with undergrad and law degrees from two different "party schools"- please don't pity me, though, CCr's, I'm doing ok anyway).</p>

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<p>
[quote]
schools like NW and oklahoma increase their numbers of NMS'ers by anointing as scholars all finalists who choose to enroll.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>don't they not only enroll but also list those schools as their first choice to get that though? in other words, not all finalists who choose to enroll?</p>

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<p>Wvartsymom, I can see how this might have been misleading. I didn’t mean to suggest that the Ivies were the only destination even for the non-sponsored scholars. Please accept my apologies for appearing to be so Ivy-centric. </p>

<p>Generally, I’ve limited these lists just to schools in the Ivy League because most of the readers here are interested in those schools. You are correct that there are many other schools with large numbers of National Merit Scholars. What I have listed here are the counts for those who were actually named NMS Scholars by the National Scholarship Corporation and I should have been clearer about that. There are only 2,500 of these each year and they are selected by the NMS committee and receive a financial award which they are able to use at any institution. </p>

<p>The remaining Scholars receive no financial award from the NMS Corporation. Instead, they are “sponsored” by the institutions at which they choose to enroll. While these are ALL terrific students, these other Scholars receive financial awards only from the sponsoring universities they choose to attend and are not designated as Scholars by the Corporation itself. </p>

<p>I suppose it is a touchy subject and I meant no disrespect to those who have been named Scholars by their sponsoring universities. The problem is that any university participating in the program may award, on its own, as many scholarships as it wishes to National Merit Finalists, so these sponsored scholarship numbers don’t have quite as much meaning.</p>

<p>Here are the numbers for the top ten schools showing the total number of Scholars who were awarded scholarships by the NMS Corporation itself, followed by the additional number sponsored by the institution in question and ranked in terms of total scholars. </p>

<p>NMS Scholars---Institutionally Sponsored Scholars---Institution</p>

<p>285----0------Harvard
51-----232----U. of Texas at Austin
63-----186----Northwestern U.
36-----195----USC
50-----154----Washington U. of St. Louis
40-----156----U. of Chicago
183----0------Yale
179----0------Princeton
38-----137----U. of Oklahoma
39-----134----Texas A&M</p>

<p>Of the above schools, Northwestern, U. of Chicago and WUSTL are relatively small. If we were to add their percentages into the Ivy League Schools list and look just at their NMS Scholars (comparing apples to apples), it would look like this.</p>

<p>National Merit Scholars as Ranked By Percentage of Class of 2011 for Selected Schools
(Non-sponsored Scholars only)</p>

<p>16.9%---Harvard
14.6%---Princeton
13.9%---Yale
5.4%-----Brown
4.8%-----UPenn
4.7%-----Dartmouth
4.6%-----Columbia
3.3%-----U. of Chicago
2.7%-----Northwestern
2.7%-----Washington U. of St. Louis
1.5%-----Cornell</p>

<p>It should also be said that the 2,500 Scholars identified by the NMS Corporation are not necessarily those with the highest test scores. I believe that other factors play a role as well, including recommendations and personal statements.</p>

<p>So, please accept my apologies for being less than clear.</p>

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<p>PtonGrad2000,</p>

<p>I asked about this in another thread but the answer I got was "my guess is...". Do you know if it's possible that some of the school-sponsored NMS may also be non-sponsored scholars but got the school-sponsored designation?</p>

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<p>f.scottie and PtonGrad2000,</p>

<p>As Sam Lee alluded to this was discussed in another thread ( <a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/449462-applications-soar-nu-3.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/449462-applications-soar-nu-3.html&lt;/a> ) and I am not sure you can just discount school sponsored awards and just compare NMSC sponsored scholars as this appears to short-change institutions that sponsor.</p>

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<p>


</p>

<p>Werner, no one is discounting the achievements of the 12,500 Finalists who were not selected as NMS National Scholars. They still constitute less than 1% of all the students who took the exam that year—a spectacular achievement.</p>

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<p>So, it appears that I was misinformed on that other thread. Thank you for that explanation; it cleared up much of my confusion.</p>

<p>With that said, it is both interesting and informative to track the destinations of the 2500 National Merit Scholars. This small group contains some of the candidates most desirable to top schools. For example, this year an astounding 38% (949) of this group enrolled in one of HYPSM. If we are to include the rest of the Ivies, this percentage jumps to 52% (1304). Like being rejected by an ultra-competitive school, not advancing past the Finalist round in the National Merit competition is not a reflection of one's personal merit, and it goes without saying that top schools still draw heavily from the "merely" Finalist group (of which this poster was a part). Still, especially since Finalist enrollments are not available, the percentage and number of National Merit Scholars in a school's class is as good a metric as any to measure the strength of that class.</p>

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<p>


Hence the hidden skew by looking at only the non-school sponsored awardees (also BTW, if you add up the numbers excluding the school-sponsored awardees, it adds up to 3600, 1100 more than just the 2500 NMSC-sponsored scholars. So these numbers obviously include the corporate and special sponsors as well as the 2500 NMSC-sponsored scholars). If one were really comparing, lets say Northwestern with Princeton, the numbers should be Northwestern: 63+186, Princeton 179+X, where X is the number of finalists who chose Princeton who did not receive a scholarship. My contention has been that X may be lower than people believe since fewer finalists may chose Princeton because they may elect instead to go to a institution that does sponser them for a school-sponsored National Merit scholarship. We don't know X so we chose to only look at the non school-sponsored numbers but this is not a true reflection either.</p>

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<p>ClareQuilty,
As indicated by my previous post, the divisor in your calculations should be 3600 not 2500 (actually its 3601). But nonetheless the percentages would be impressive.</p>

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<p>BTW, since the 63 for Northwestern and 179 for Princeton includes 1101 corporate/special sponsors as well as the 2500 NMSC-sponsored scholars, isn't this also not a true reflection of the situation either? It seems a little bit strange to throw out Northwestern's 186 school-sponsored scholars but keep in the 1100 corporate/special scholars in the mix. The fact is we don't really know the exact number of the 2500 NMSC-sponsored scholars attending schools since the number really is the number of NMSC-sponsored scholars plus corporate/special scholars. You can add up the numbers (adds up to 3601 and not 2500) from the NMSC Annual Report (pp. 31-33):
<a href="http://www.nationalmerit.org/07_annual_report.pdf%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nationalmerit.org/07_annual_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>I have been named a national merit semi-finalist this year. But the awards are confusing. Some corporations only offer $2,000 a year while some schools like USC, Northwestern, etc. offer full scholarships to finalists if you list them as your first choice school. What kind of scholarships do National Merit Scholars get from the National Merit Corporation? If they are excluding you from school sponsored awards that could result in your full tuition, room and board being paid I would imagine they are pretty good, but I haven't heard anything about the amounts they offer. It sounds to me like the school sponsored scholarships are much better than the corporate sponsored scholarships. Anyone know? Thanks!</p>

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<p>PtonGrad2000,</p>

<p>Thanks for your response. In that case, then Northwestern's number should be 63.</p>