<p>The National Merit Scholarship Corporation just released its annual booklet last Friday. Here are the schools that enroll the most National Merit Scholars (subtracting those students who won through corporate and school sponsorship).</p>
<ol>
<li>Harvard College: 268</li>
<li>Yale University: 206</li>
<li>Stanford University: 195</li>
<li>Princeton University: 181</li>
<li>Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT): 160</li>
<li>University of Pennsylvania: 117</li>
<li>Duke University: 112</li>
<li>Columbia University: 91</li>
<li>University of California-Berkeley: 90</li>
<li>University of Chicago: 86</li>
<li>Brown University: 79</li>
<li>Dartmouth College: 76</li>
<li>Northwestern University: 67</li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis: 64</li>
<li>University of Texas-Austin: 57</li>
<li>University of Notre Dame: 51</li>
<li>University of Michigan-Ann Arbor: 45</li>
<li>Rice University: 43</li>
<li>Vanderbilt University: 40</li>
<li>Georgetown University: 36</li>
<li>University of Southern California (USC): 35</li>
<li>University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill (UNC): 35</li>
<li>University of Oklahoma: 34</li>
<li>University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa: 33</li>
<li>Carnegie Mellon University: 33</li>
<li>University of Virginia: 31</li>
<li>Johns Hopkins University: 26</li>
<li>University of California-Los Angeles: 26</li>
<li>Emory University: 9</li>
<li>Tufts University: 8</li>
<li>Wake Forest University: 1</li>
</ol>
<p>I've only strictly included schools that most CC posters refer to as "elite schools" which is why Emory, Tufts, and Wake make an appearance though they perform terribly and its clear almost no tippety-top students go there. I included Oklahoma and Alabama since they perform well and I wanted to highlight to the CC community these these two state schools are enrolling more "high school academic superstars" than research powerhouses like Johns Hopkins and UCLA!</p>
<p>Its interesting to see how this list basically emulates the USNWR ranking with precision. A couple of overperformers include Berkeley and Texas while underperformers include all of the private schools located outside the Ivy+Stanford+MIT+Duke+Chicago+Northwestern+Wash U realm.</p>
<p>What are the initial thoughts from the CC Community? ROLL TIDE? ;)</p>
<p>Oh boy, those numbers do wonders to revive the spirits of the academic low-esteem sufferers. If it isn’t the Chicago crowd, it is the Durham one! The Trojans are soon to arrive!</p>
<p>I look forward to some true surgical dissecting of the data to separate the classes of recipients, or remove the school sponsored/purchased scholarships from the “real” ones, or any other crutch that will reveal the true champion. </p>
<p>And if that fails, perhaps a little twist of ranking by … tiers, as that device has become quite popular with the wannabe tribe re-rankers.</p>
<p>Really? Those who make NM and get a corporate or school sponsorship aren’t tippity top students? Someone should let college board and the world know as the rest of us would have thought that all those who qualify for NMSF are tippity top - at least for that one day in Oct - and for some of them, IF they are in the right state for their score. They’d have been out of luck if they’d lived in other states.</p>
<p>But what would I know… I would have thought one would determine tippity top students (as per test scores) based on the SAT and/or ACT scores, but that’s just me.</p>
Its much harder to become an actual National Merit winner than simply get the NMSF designation. A lot of the high performing school like Harvard are located in states where it is very difficult to gain the NMSF status so your argument is moot there.</p>
<p>SAT/ACT are fine measures to use to gauge the overall strength of the student body but the National Merit count gives you an idea of where you would find a greater concentration of academic superstars. UAlabama and UOklahoma should be especially commended for using scholarships to draw some extremely qualified students.</p>
<p>This I agree with. The rest of that last post is hogwash esp if you think Harvard only gets its top NM students from MA.</p>
<p>You should also realize that “academic superstars” is hardly something based upon one test on one day of one year - at least - for most of us. Math-wise, that test only goes through Geometry! You know how many students there are who are really good at Alg/Geo, but then hit their wall at Calc? Are they still academic superstars? (IMO they could be - IF in a different major, but I digress.) There are far more academic superstars than just NMF. I still say, IF using test scores alone (definitely debatable for many esp for certain majors), then use the SAT and ACT. They’re at least higher up tests.</p>
Obviously Harvard doesn’t, but that was my point. The best schools draw students from all over so the fact that the NMSF cutoffs are lower in some states should be irrelevant since most private school from Harvard to Wash U to USC draw students from around the country.</p>
The PSAT is only used as a qualifying criterion for the Semifinalist stage of the National Merit Scholarship Competition; moving from Finalist to Winner occurs after the committee has a holistic evaluation of all the candidates including their performance on the SAT/ACT, strength of courseload, grades, extracurriculars, leadership, etc.</p>
<p>The beauty of the National Merit competition is that its basically an outside analysis that mirrors college admissions so its results give you a good idea of where “the best of the best” are going to college. The strong correlation with USNWR legitimizes the ranking’s credibility with regards to telling us which schools have the best undergraduate reputation.</p>
<p>Also, you would be surprised how many kids who are good at Calc don’t do well on the Math section of the SAT. The latter tests critical thinking schools as supposed to purely content-based knowledge.</p>
<p>So, then explain how the one student with a 210 who qualifies is a “superstar” but the one with a 220 is not. Then explain how the one who didn’t qualify (for whatever reason) but got a 2350 on the real SAT isn’t either.</p>
<p>You don’t see how ridiculous that sounds?</p>
<p>What about those who studied to get their score vs didn’t (whether qualifying or not). The score, itself, tells nothing of that.</p>
<p>The PSAT is one test on one day. Anyone who does well on it did a great job. The top scorers do tend to be good academic students (at least through high school - some don’t actually do well in college). But you take it way too far saying those who get certain scholarships are the only academic superstars IMO.</p>
<p>If you say so. Everyone is entitled to their opinion. Personally, I’m still going to recommend my students select a college based upon programs they are interested in and opportunities available to them (and cost).</p>
<p>I was beginning to figure that out. Slow day at work (just sort of supervising today rather than actually working), so I’m reading more threads than I usually have time for. I’ve now got one more name pegged…</p>
<p>May I suggest to spend some time analyzing your own statement. Do you find surprising that the most selective schools attract and enroll the students with the highest test scores? </p>
<p>Why is the OP discounting some winners because they are school sponsored? I think the fact that Georgia Tech is getting 119 merit scholars says a lot regardless of whether or not they sponsored 91 of them. Same with Northeastern getting 103 even if they sponsored 84.</p>
It is indeed impressive that Georgia Tech had 119 National Merit Finalists who subsequently were labeled “winners” by the university but I discounted the school-sponsored winners so I could do an apples-to-apples comparison of National Merit Winners to see which universities enrolled the most.</p>
<p>I applaud the schools who choose to use their funds to provide scholarship money to their strongest students, which those who make it to latter stages of the National Merit Scholarship competition definitely are.</p>
<p>
I think the usual suspects perform as well as expected but the real fascinating cases here are schools like Emory, Georgetown, CMU, and Johns Hopkins which are fairly selective but don’t attract the same amount of National Merit Winners as Northwestern, Columbia, Duke, etc. I guess I’m a little surprised by the disparity between the bottom Ivies+Chicago+Duke and say Hopkins or Georgetown.</p>
<p>State schools besides Berkeley also do worse than expected given their sizes. Who would have thought UCB would attract 2x as much National Merit Scholars as Michigan and 3x as much as UVA?</p>
<p>Nah, this is just as interesting as analyzing the yield numbers of Harvard versus BYU or Nebraska, and throw a bit of Tulane in the mix.</p>
<p>Why would be it be interesting to analyze why schools such as Oklahoma and Alabama continue to spend their funds in acquiring high scorers, and others prefer to focus on offering need-based aid. Why are the policies of Tulane or Arizone State … interesting beyond the basic “yep, that is what they do!” Is it really interesting to analyze why a school such as UT at Austin decides to drop the program? </p>
<p>It is really not very complicated nor very useful to dissect beyond knowing that different schools follow different paths. Some by choice. Others by necessity.</p>
<p>Your list favors those that don’t sponsor because you just ASSUME NONE of “the students who won through corporate and school sponsorship” could become NMS through the Corporation. That’s not necssarily the case especially for those schools that have very high SAT ranges, such as University of Chicago.</p>
<p>OTOH, a list including those students would favor the sponsoring schools. </p>
<p>There’s nothing fascinating about how Georgetown, JHU, Emory, and CMU are doing. Their SAT/ACT ranges are lower.</p>
<p>Maybe we could add in current faculty members of the National Academies and really get an accurate picture…A truly “national” ranking of student and faculty strength. :D</p>
Slow day at work (just sort of supervising today rather than actually working), so I’m reading more threads than I usually have time for. I’ve now got one more name pegged…</p>