<p>
</p>
<p>Actually, if you look at the total numbers of National Merit Scholars actually enrolling at colleges and universities in 2013, the order looks like this (colleges with over 100 NM Scholars enrolled, Fall 2013):</p>
<p>Chicago 314 [217]
Harvard 268*
Vanderbilt 260 [194]
Northwestern 249 [183]
USC 245 [192]
WUSTL 202 [157]
Yale 178*
MIT 177*
Stanford 176*
Oklahoma 173 [151]
Princeton 162*
Georgia Tech 161 [128]
Texas A&M 150 [126]
Northeastern 144 [115]
Duke 139*
Minnesota 135 [107]
Alabama 123 [111]
Penn 121*
Arizona State 119 [102]
UC Berkeley 109*</p>
<ul>
<li>College does not fund National Merit Scholarships.
[n] = Number of National Merit Scholarships funded by the school itself </li>
</ul>
<p>As you can see, the pecking order looks much different if we consider only National Merit Scholars funded by some source other than the school itself. Then we get: Harvard 268, Yale 178, MIT 177, Stanford 176, Princeton 162, Duke 139, Penn 121, UC Berkeley 109, Chicago 97, Northwestern 66, Vanderbilt 66, USC 53, WUSTL 45, Georgia Tech 33, Northeastern 29, Minnesota 28, Texas A&M 24, Oklahoma 22, Arizona State 17, Alabama 12. To which a more complete list would add schools like Columbia 85, Brown 71, Cornell 69, Texas 67, Rice 64, Dartmouth 60, Michigan 56, Notre Dame 52, Caltech 42, UNC Chapel Hill 37, UVA 36, Williams 30, Johns Hopkins 28, Georgetown 23, NYU 20, etc.</p>
<p>Why do so many National Merit Scholars go to HYPSM when HYPSM don’t give them one thin dime for it? Well, doh, they’re HYPSM, and besides, they have generous need-based FA that will take care of anyone who needs the money, and as for those who don’t need it–well, they don’t need it, and they figure they’d rather have a first-tier education than a little extra cash. That’s the market Northwestern is competing in. But not everyone looks at it that way. Students who want to parlay National Merit Finalist status into cash will by and large go where the cash is being offered even if it means trading down in perceived educational quality, and choose schools like Alabama and Arizona State. Your question presumes that’s the market Northwestern is competing in; I don’t think so. Northwestern does quite well competing for National Merit Scholars funded by outside sources, and clearly it can dramatically increase its number of National Merit Scholars (nearly fourfold) through the simple expedient of offering a few token thousands to the other Finalists who apply and are accepted. This also suggests that the number of Finalists attending other top schools is probably quite high. So a school like Harvard could also probably similarly triple or quadruple its number of National Merit Scholars by offering a token National Merit Scholarship to every Finalist in its entering class. It doesn’t see a need to do this because most of those people are happy to attend Harvard without a financial incentive to do so.</p>