<p>Does having NMSF status provide a significant edge in these top schools' admissions?
If two applicants have 2300+ on the SAT, will one's having NMSF status provide much of tip (compared to minor differences in EC's, etc.)? For though the PSAT is, of course, a slightly easier version of the SAT, there seems to be much (undeserved?) hype for NM recognition.</p>
<p>Statistics on acceptance rates for non-NMSF's vs NMSF's would be great, too, if anyone can procure that.</p>
<p>The ivies seem to have the most NMF students. However, I wouldn’t say that these kids get accepted because they are NMF. They are accepted because they have high stats.</p>
<p>I don’t know the answer to your question about essentially identical stats students where one is NMF and the other isn’t.</p>
<p>I don’t think it matters to if you are a NMSF. It seems to matter to colleges who are trying to elevate the academic stature of the universities and want to admit and talk about in their literature how many NMFs they have. I suspect someone with equal stats to a NMF has the same opportunities and acceptance would depend on the rest of the application.</p>
<p>Ivy’s attract many NMSF’s to apply without actively soliciting them, unlike some other schools which buy the names of NMSF’s and send out mailings and other solicitations. So, ivy’s are not going to loose any bragging rights because they turned away a NMSF. So I do not think they care if you are a NMSF.</p>
<p>Also, remember it is not the number of the NMSF’s that are admitted that count, but the number of scholarship winners. Now a school that gives good scholarships to NMSF is increasing the number of winners by giving scholarships to all eligible students. So if 150 NMSF students apply to a school like University of Alabama or University of Arizona, and the school gives scholarships to 130 students, and 20 get scholarships from another source, that school has 150 National merit scholarship winners i.e. every NMSF who applied and joined is a winner.</p>
<p>At the Ivy’s, let us say 4000 NMSF apply, 400 are admitted and join and only 200 get scholarships from an outside source (corporate or NMSC themselves as the college does not give NM scholarships), it has only 200 winners. In most cases, the winners may not even know they have won a scholarship before the admission decisions are made, or if even if they know, they may not tell the school. So the school has no idea which NMSF will be a scholarship winner. I seriously doubt an Ivy will admit a student in the hope they will be a NMSF winner. Even if the school knows that a student has won an NMSF scholarship, it is doubtful that it would sway the decision positively as the chances are high that the next candidate will also be a NMS winner. So I would say that any advantage that NMSF provides to Ivy league applicants is negligible. In the best case scenario, if there is only one place left and there are two equally qualified candidates, the NMSF may get an advantage. So do not bank on NMSF status as your tip, work on everything else.</p>
<p>*Statistics on acceptance rates for non-NMSF’s vs NMSF’s would be great, too, if anyone can procure that. *</p>
<p>I have not seen any and I doubt if the ivy’s even keep that statistics.</p>
<p>Roughly the top 1% of PSAT-takers become MNSFs. However, the median SAT at most of the Ivies is above the 99th-percentile.</p>
<p>Since some states have much higher NMSF cut-offs, and the ivies know that, I don’t think just being a NMSF/NMF is enough to sway an acceptance.</p>