Please, please stop saying "You can always go to [X] for grad school"

Parents Forum
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<p>I forgot to mention that I considered disqualifying Northwestern on the grounds that it had an unfair advantage. :D</p>

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<p>Brown has Laura Linney, John Krasinski, Julie Bowen (Modern Family), Emma Watson (though she hasn’t yet graduated), Chris Hayes and Alex Wagner (MSNBC), Mary Chapin Carpenter, Duncan Sheik, Lisa Loeb, and Jo Beth Williams.</p>

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<p>

I listed the numbers including sponsored scholars in post #360. Harvard still had the most, but there were many other differences, such as Tuscaloosa at #4. The original tangent had nothing to do with financial aid. Instead NMS was a proxy for number of high scores, so the sponsored list wasn’t as relevant to the tangent.</p>

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<p>“NMS was a proxy for number of high scores, so the sponsored list wasn’t as relevant to the tangent”
Excuse me? One can’t become a NMF WITHOUT high scores, regardless of whether one ends up attending a college that offers / sponsors NMF scholarships or not.
High scores= High scores.
NMF’s who receive scholarships are not considered to be “inferior” to other NMF’s or suspected of having lower scores because of where they go to college.</p>

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<p>And shouldn’t you count the semi-finalists too since they had scores just as high as scores in states with lower cut offs? :D</p>

<p>And for drama, don’t forget Carnegie Mellon:
Steven Bocho
Barbara Feldon
Holly Hunter
Cherry Jones
Zachary Quinto
Blair Underwood and many more
</p>

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<p>And for convictions for insider trading, securities fraud, and cardiovascular events
</p>

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<p>

I previously mentioned Tuscaloosa was #4 on the NMS list (including sponsors). So if we are using NMS as a proxy for number of high scores, then we’d expect Tuscaloosa will be near the top on other measures of number of top scores, such as the CDS data. Yet the CDS data lists 75th percentile scores of 620 and 640 and only a small percentage scoring above 700. The sponsors are not a good representation of the overall score distribution. The same pattern occurs with other colleges with a large percentage of NMS being sponsors. A more obvious example is University of Oklahoma due to a more comparable class size. Oklahoma has nearly 4x as many NMS as Cornell and a similar number of students, so we’d expect Oklahoma to have far more high scores than Cornell, yet the CDS data suggests the opposite, by a wide margin. You get a better correlation with number of high scores, if you ignore sponsors.</p>

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<p>This made me LOL.</p>

<p>I don’t know if it is a regular thing, but I saw Jim Cramer’s financial show and he was giving out the “Mr. Potter Award” after the character on “It’s a Wonderful Life.” I guess it’s sort of like the Nobel Prize of ruthless and morally questionable maneuvers in finance.</p>

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<p>“The sponsors are not a good representation of the overall score distribution.”
Huh?? Who ever said they were??? You are trying to compare apples to oranges. </p>

<p>“Oklahoma has nearly 4x as many NMS as Cornell and a similar number of students, so we’d expect Oklahoma to have far more high scores than Cornell, yet the CDS data suggests the opposite, by a wide margin”</p>

<p>Ye Gods!
You are trying to argue that the scores of NMF’s at Oklahoma must be far lower than those at Cornell. Is it not possible that the CDS data suggests that the average scores of NON NMF’s at Oklahoma are far lower than at Cornell?<br>
That makes much more sense mathematically.</p>

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<p>And for convictions for insider trading, securities fraud, and cardiovascular events
</p>

<p>Many of the same factors that make for higher incomes five and ten years out are factors for the above. (I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a poor person convicted of insider trading or securities fraud.)</p>

<p>I have no data on NMS winners who spent time in the pen.</p>

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<p>^ LOL! you are a HOOT mini!</p>

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<p>You take the pointless jockeying way too seriously. As if it’s the root of all evil in the world.</p>

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<p>

As stated earlier, the number of NMSs was being used as a proxy for the number of high scoring students in the class. The whole point was estimating schools that have a large “density” of high scoring students in the class, not comparing the scores of national merit scholars at different colleges. Note that high scoring group includes students within the class that have high test scores (for example 98th percentile), but are not National Merit anything. As discussed in more detail earlier, the correlation between number of NMSs and the overall number of high scoring students in the class is better, if you do not consider college sponsorships. One many possible examples that was given was Oklahoma having nearly 4x as many NMSs as Cornell, yet having far fewer high scoring students in the full class (not just NMSs), as estimated by CDS data.</p>

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<p>This is silly - anyone with half a brain can figure out the “thickness” of smart students at Cornell is greater than that of Alabama and (because Alabama has made such strides in recruiting / rewarding high-scoring out of staters) the “thickness” of smart students is higher at Alabama than at Oklahoma. Which is not saying (for the zillionth time) that there aren’t very smart kids at Oklahoma or Alabama.</p>

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<p>This is getting to pathetic levels.
Sorry to embarrass you, Hunt, again.</p>

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<p>Miami, pretty sure that Hunt isn’t the one that should be embarressed.</p>

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<p>Someone posted this on another thread–speaks directly to the issue of “thickness” and what it may mean for students’ success. Interesting.</p>

<p>[Malcolm</a> Gladwell - Zeitgeist Americas 2013 - YouTube](<a href=“Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube”>Why Did I Say "Yes" to Speak Here? | Malcolm Gladwell | Google Zeitgeist - YouTube)</p>

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<p>I sometimes find that I’m embarrassed for somebody else.</p>

<p>As for this “density” argument, as I’ve mentioned in other discussions, people wouldn’t get up in arms if somebody said, “I want to play soccer on the top travel team, because I want to play with other talented, motivated players who will spur me on to do my best.” There may be other people who would rather be the star in a somewhat less competitive team in the hopes that they will get noticed. This is pretty much the difference between somebody who wants to go to a highly selective school vs. somebody who’d rather be a high-performing student at a flagship or other school.</p>

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<p>Data 10</p>

<p>NMF involve more than just test scores, there is a requirement for EC and grades . Because of this the NMF designation represents the strongest group of applicants of any single measure you can use. The NMF that I have known have had little difficulty finding and socializing with people of similar intelligence so the argument that pizzagirl makes in post #357 is irrelevant to them.</p>

<p>The bigger question is why so many of NMF choose Univ of Chicago and Alabama as compared to other schools. Once again it is not simply financial aid because almost all schools provide financial aid to NMF (either need, merit, or both).</p>

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<p>Here’s why they go to Alabama: [National</a> Merit and National Achievement Scholarships - Undergraduate Scholarships - The University of Alabama](<a href=“http://scholarships.ua.edu/nationalscholars/]National”>National Merit Scholars – Scholarships | The University of Alabama)</p>

<p>It’s a sweet deal not offered by many other colleges.</p>