<p>Yours are good questions, marite. Hard to factor in the other issues like Stanford, Harvard, Princeton etcc guaranteed no loan income/based admission policy. We need a good statistician to covary out all these factors. Volunteers, anyone?</p>
<p>Perhaps there should be a way of looking at the % of students who took the PSAT and became state NMSFs of the entering class of each school (if there was such a way of culling this data). There are those students who became NMSFs who simply didnt bother to do the paperwork to move on to finalist status b/c they (a) werenât planning to apply to schools offering NMS and perhaps didnt have parents who worked for any of the Corp sponsors and (b) the small additional merit award wouldnât have mattered to them.</p>
<p>As an aside, the co my h worked for when the kids were applying isnt a cop sponsor b/c they offer their own big, national scholarship⊠BUT this scholarship isnt open to employees of the company!! Grrr. That made NO sense.</p>
<p>The following makes more sense and if you put the % in front of it then it will show even a better picture.</p>
<p>Sources: National Merit Scholarship Corporation; The Chronicle of Higher Education
Institution (# of Scholars In Freshman Class/# Sponsored by the College)
Harvard College (285/0) - 16.28%
Yale University (213/0) - 13.31%
Princeton University (175/0) - 12.96%
Stanford University (147/0) - 8.40%
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (114/0) - 10.86%
<p>Not sure how that really ads much, POIH, other than culling out the schools in the top 60 that donât offer school sponsored NM $. I think JHSâs explanation in post #60 is spot on.</p>
<p>Thanks for the explanation, JHS. Now, can you try Harvard vs. Stanford? I believe only S decided against Stanford because of the sunshine factor. ;)</p>
<p>âStanford doesnât sponsor any scholarships itself, so of those 130 National Merit Finalists who go to Stanford, maybe only 30-40 will qualify for someone elseâs sponsored scholarship and get the âNational Merit Scholarâ tag.â
That is NOT correct. NMS are designated by AND can be sponsored by the National Merit Scholarship foundation alone, regardless of where they go to college, as nnmgm stated earlier. They do not require sponsorship by a college to be listed as NMS. All that is required is that qualifying students fill out the required NM forms.</p>
<p>âThe list we saw above was a list of Scholars, not Finalistsâ
90% of finalists become scholars.The numbers would not change that much.</p>
<p>^^^^Is that something new? Iâve always understood that NM corporation only offers a one time $2.5k scholarship. However, it does seem to be true that 90% of finalists do become scholars one way or another.</p>
<p>Thank for all the replies. My DD is a semifinalist and is considering applying to some ivys and that was the reason for my original post. I was sincerely hoping NMF will help her at least a little bit but unfortunately it will not.</p>
<p>At her private HS, all kids are required to take the PSAT both sophomre and junior years.</p>
<p>Well, we will find out in a few months what schools and merit aid she will get, if anyâŠ</p>
<p>Top 20 schools ranked in order of number of National Merit Finalists in the freshman class who are <em>not</em> sponsored by the school, 2008</p>
<p>Sources: COHE, National Merit Scholarship Corp.
Institution (# of UNsponsored freshman in 2008)
Harvard College (285)
Yale University (213)
Princeton University (175)
Stanford University (147)
MIT (114)
Duke (99)
Univ. of Pennsylvania (98)
Brown University (88)
Univ. of California  Berkeley (85)
Dartmouth College (78)
11T. University of Chicago (74)
11T. Columbia University (74)
Univ. of Texas  Austin (68)
Washington University  St. Louis (67)
Cornell University (66)
Rice University (65)
Univ. of Michigan  Ann Arbor (57)
Univ. of Notre Dame (50)
Northwestern University (48)
19T. California Institute of Technology (46)
19T. Georgetown University (46)
Vanderbilt University (40)</p>
<p>I think this is more fun:
% of freshman class, 2008, who are national merit finalists (whether sponsored by the institution or not - ultimately I think that is irrelevant. . . if theyâre there, theyâre there) - **couldnât do the whole list, but picked out some ones that seemed interesting. . . **</p>
<p>Sources: COHE, National Merit Scholarship Corp., College Board Enrollment Data for âFirst Time Freshmenâ</p>
<p>Harvey Mudd College - 30.7%
CalTech - 19.5%
Carleton College - 18%
Harvard - 17.1%
Univ. of Chicago - 17%
Yale - 16.1%
Princeton - 14.1%
Northwestern - 11.5%
MIT - 10.9%
Vanderbilt - 9.4%
Stanford - 8.6%
Grinnell - 8.4%
Rice - 8.2%
Macalester - 7.5%
Dartmouth - 7.1%
Bowdoin - 6.8%
Denison - 5.8%
Columbia Univ. - 5.5%
Univ. of Oklahoma - 4.7%
Univ. of Pennsylvania - 4.1%
Univ. of North Carolina - Chapel Hill - 3.7%
Univ. of Florida - 2.6%
Texas A&M - 2%
UC Berkeley - 2%
Univ. of Alabama - 1.6%
UT-Austin - 0.9% </p>
<p>Will have some more statistics in a minute. . . looking at the full data set from the NMSC for 2008 College Freshmen Finalists.</p>
<p>90% of NMSFs (semifinalists) become finalists, with the number of finalists around 15,000. NM corporation sponsores 2,500 of then with their $2,500 scholarship. Others may be sponsored by the schools, or by corporate scholarships⊠Only the ones who get some money for their MNF status get to be called âscholarsâ. I am pretty sure that that number is well bellow 90% of finalists.</p>
<p>I find some of this really offensive. Iâm a semifinalist for the competition (finding out if I made the cut to finalist in January-February), and it is NOT just about some test score. That gets you to semifinalist status. For the finalists and eventually scholars, you have to write a long essay, get a recommendation (usually from your principal), have comparative SAT scores, and also have a stellar transcript, which you similarly submit.
All of that goes into consideration to pick the finalists and eventually the scholars.</p>
<p>On top of that, my Harvard interviewer told me that she was an average candidate but marked Harvard as her top school and they told her that is what got her in.</p>
<p>It is a prestigious competition, regardless of whether or not an Ivy League accepts you.</p>
<p>I find that the folks who dismiss National Merit as âonly a test scoreâ tend to (tend to, not always) have lower test scores but better grades.</p>
<p>Those, like me, who de-emphasize GPA in relation to test scores tend to (or our kids tend to) have higher test scores but lower grades.</p>
<p>And I have heard the parents of a child who had abysmally low grades and test scores, but who had started his own successful business, say that starting a successful business is more important than getting good grades and test scores.</p>
<p>You see, each of us tends to believe that whatever is in our own favor ought to be given more weight that whatever weighs against us. Thus it shall forever be.</p>
<p>So if youâre a National Merit Semifinalist, good for you! Take the money and run. True, itâs only a test score, but itâs your test score. Itâs good for you, and there is nothing wrong with that. Use it to your advantage, just as everyone else will use his or her advantages to their fullest. Itâs all part of the game.</p>
<p>NMS myself back in the old days ⊠itâs my impression that something like 90% of the semifinalists become finalists, which would suggest that the further screening criteria isnât fairly rigorous. I donât know how that is offensive, and it doesnât take away from your accomplishment, augustagirl.</p>
<p>Also a former NMF from the dark ages, and parent of oneâI second what Pizzagirl says. And I certainly donât dismiss the accomplishment as mantori says; I simply know from my own and my Dâs experience that it was worth pretty much nothing in terms of college admissions for us.</p>
<p>For those parents who were NMS back when, how did you get scholarships? I didnât get one through my university, but through Dresser Industries (I had no affiliation with them whatsoever) - which is now Halliburton.</p>