<p>“I’m not sure exactly what you mean”
What I mean is that there is no way to determine how many are $2500 scholarship winners at HYPS ,or Cornell or any non sponsoring university and which are corporate scholarship winners. They are not separated out by college.</p>
<p>I went to a not so prestigious undergrad and got into a top 3 grad school for my field. I don’t see what the problem is?</p>
<p>Sorry to be joining part of the conversation late, but I agree with blinctonk’s post #413, about honors groups at strong state flagships, except that I would add that however it winds up being accomplished, a lot of the “top” students in different fields wind up knowing each other as well.</p>
<p>I disagree with PG’s remark
</p>
<p>The reason I disagree is numerical: My high school, with about 350 students per class, had an “intellectual” subgroup of 20 students per class (at a stretch). The honors college at a large state flagship may have 25 times that number per class. The sheer numbers make a difference. The group is only “small” relative to the denominator, the total number of students. But really, it’s not small at all.</p>
<p>Re: 439, you’re right, I had that part wrong. I always forget about the corporate-sponsored scholarships. I guess because my kids could never get any of them.</p>
<p>The rest of it was still right though, I think. To put more teeth in #437, I just took a look.</p>
<p>Nearly two thirds of Cornell undergrads come from just seven states. I will list them, together with the latest NMS cutoff score I just found, all for the same year.
New York - 219; New Jersey - 224; California - 223; Pennsylvania - 217; Massachusetts -224; Maryland- 223; and Texas - 219.</p>
<p>The cutoff for Oklahoma for the same year was 210.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure there are a large number of students attending Cornell who were not NMS semi-finalists, but would have been if they’d lived in Oklahoma. And if they’d lived in Oklahoma and decided to attend U Oklahoma they would have magically become “National Merit Scholars”. The same kids, with the same scores. With the different result merely because of what state they lived in, and what university they chose to attend.</p>
<p>Yes, IF they are clustered together in an honors college - which is in essence replicating “a small Yale” (or whatever) implanted on a bigger campus. No, if they are just dispersed on the campus.</p>
<p>What % of the US pop lives in NY/NJ/CA/PA/MA/MD/TX? That two-thirds is only meaningful or powerful if I know that number.</p>
<p>The density thing is interesting and means more to some than others. My older kid went to UVa as a Virginia kid. He really wanted to apply ED and be done with it. He had a couple top 10 schools on his list but this was 2005 and the only schools we would have signed off on for ED were instate schools. UVa then and now is not easy to get into, even for instate kids. But lots of kids want to feel “special”. So, a top academic kid sometimes wants to apply beyond UVa, Michigan, Berkeley,etc. But sometimes those schools are the best fit. UVa was a great fit. But I ran into someone tonight who talked about a local kid who was “so smart” and was at Cornell. That is some of the draw sometimes, the local kid who goes to UVa, William & Mary, Virginia Tech, may be just as “smart” but the experience is just more common.</p>
<p>re 446, the comparison is vs. U Oklahoma, not the whole country. I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that U Oklahoma has relatively a large proportion of kids (and NMS recipients) from Oklahoma, and from neighboring states which yes would include TX, but otherwise probably have lower NMS cutoffs than the states that dominate Cornell’s undergrad student body. And a comparatively small proportion from: NY/NJ/CA/PA/MA/MD.
Someone else can look it up if they care; I don’t.</p>
<p>just curious, what are the # of students that enrolled at Cornell last year from each of the 7 states you listed?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>37.6% of the U.S. population lives in those 7 states, according to U.S. Census Bureau 2012 estimates.</p>
<p>And, assuming the same geographic representation applied to them, Cornell’s corporate-sponsored scholarship recipients would also probably be found to have higher scores than Oklahoma’s NMS recipients on average. Because in order to get the corporate-sponsored NMS scholarship, they had to first make semi-finalist in a state that had a significantly higher Semi-finalist cutoff score than Oklahoma has. Assuming the corporate awards are given to semi-finalists, as the college-sponsored awards are.</p>
<p>Sorry I just made a quick spreadsheet and I didn’t save it. I found the data someplace in the morass of Cornell’s compiled institutional data, a table labeled “Undergraduate Enrollment by Geographic Origin”. It’s there, someplace.</p>
<p>relapse over, ta-ta for now.</p>
<p>My view: they should have a singular class of “National Merit winners” with one clear designation–that is, the 2500 chosen by the National Merit Scholar Corporation. Simultaneously, all national merit finalists (including the winners) may get a scholarship from a company or from a sponsoring college. In terms of the money, this second money award may take the place of the original award, but the designation would stay. </p>
<p>Given the emphasis of the ivy league for “building a class” using non-academic criteria (leaving plenty of academic stars out), it’s nice to have a nation-wide distinction that is based on scholarly criteria. </p>
<p>Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…</p>
<p>
To complicate this even more, some of the one-time scholarships from NMSC are underwritten by corporations, and kids get them even if their parents don’t work for that corporation–my son got one of these, and they asked him to write a thank-you note to the corporation, if I recall correctly. Are these included in the 2,500?</p>
<p>NMS won’t help one in the least in getting into grad school.</p>
<p>"To complicate this even more, some of the one-time scholarships from NMSC are underwritten by corporations, and kids get them even if their parents don’t work for that corporation–my son got one of these, and they asked him to write a thank-you note to the corporation, if I recall correctly. Are these included in the 2,500? "
yes, according to NMSF</p>
<p>"NMS won’t help one in the least in getting into grad school. "
Correct. Grad schools dont care one whit what you did or did not do in HS.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>~8000 National Merit Scholarships are awarded per year, split between the ones sponsored by businesses (~1000), ones sponsored by colleges (~5000), and ones sponsored by the National Merit Corporation itself (2500.) The National Merit Scholarship Corporation has said they call recipients of any of these “National Merit Scholars”.</p>
<p>Whether your son is one of the 2500 awarded by the National Merit Corporation, I don’t really know. Maybe businesses help to pay for some of the ones awarded by the corporation, sort of like adopting a kid ha ha. Anyway, even if someone did win the one sponsored by business, I’ve heard they may take you out of the running for the one awarded by the NM Corporation, so the contest may not include the 1000 which win the business-sponsored ones.</p>
<p>In any case, I think the award would be improved if it was changed as I specified in my previous post.</p>
<p>“In the 2012
program, most of the 2,500 National Merit $2500
Scholarships were financed by nmsc with its own
funds. Business organizations that provide corporate sponsored
awards also helped underwrite a portion of
these scholarships with grants they provided in lieu of
paying administrative fees.”
Page 10 from the 2012 yearly report.</p>