<p>Does harvard participate in National Merit Scholarship Program?</p>
<p>How does Harvard select what people to give award to?</p>
<p>Harvard does not participate.</p>
<p>And this is because Harvard has something like over 800 NM Finalists enrolled at any given time.</p>
<p>1,373 in the last 4 years, actually.</p>
<p>Byerly, sometimes it is a little weird how much you know about harvard...</p>
<p>but I mean that in a good way, it's pretty cool :)</p>
<p>and rather helpful for those concerned about every detail of a situtaion...</p>
<p>oh, well, that is that.</p>
<p>Actually it's the principle not the numbers that dictates the matter here. Harvard does not award merit-based scholarships. National Merit Scholarship is...a merit-based scholarship.</p>
<p>None of the Ivies, nor MIT, nor Duke, nor Stanford "create" their own NMS winners.</p>
<p>My friend just won the Presidential Scholar award but didn't win the National Merit Scholarship (he was a finalist). Weird, yeah?</p>
<p>^ What is the Presidential Scholar award? Strangely, I've never heard of it... Is it more selective than NMS?</p>
<p>It is far more selective. The top 30 or so ACT/SAT test takers from each state are identified and named "candidates." In the end, 2 from each state are selected for an expense-paid visit to the White House, etc. It's considered very prestigious.</p>