<p>My friend said he was offered one, is it true? Which are the top schools that give full or nice scholarships for these national merit finalists? Any in the top 50? what about UC's and Ivies? Stanford?</p>
<p>Yes, some schools (usually state schools) do give full ride+. Check these out on the old forum</p>
<p>I'm sure there are other threads you can search for.</p>
<p>like over30 said, they're mostly state schools, or private schools who get relatively few NMFs. My sister and I were both NMFs, and I remember us getting mail from the University of Oklahoma and several SUNY schools. University of Denver doesn't tie their merit scholarships exclusively to National Merit, but they offer full tuition grants. It's highly unlikely that a school like Stanford would give you anything special for being a NMF, since tons of their students are.</p>
<p>This is a link to a site put together by a poster on the old forum. <a href="http://homepage.mac.com/l_j/secondhome/National_Merit.html%5B/url%5D">http://homepage.mac.com/l_j/secondhome/National_Merit.html</a></p>
<p>This may not be a useful but is interesting. <a href="http://www.carleton.edu/admissions/nationalmerit/listing.html%5B/url%5D">http://www.carleton.edu/admissions/nationalmerit/listing.html</a></p>
<p>That last website is interesting. Harvard's freshmen class in 2002 had 396 national merit finlists, which was 24.37% of the freshmen class. And MITs was about 14%</p>
<p>I thought that like 40% would be National Merit finalists at Harvard.....So, is it a big award that could really incfluence your admission?</p>