<p>^ Absolutely! :)</p>
<p>If there were a list with “real” numbers - if there were no school or corporate sponsorship such that all the kids would be competing in the same pool, I expect UChicago, WashU, Northwestern, and Vanderbilt would probably move up at least a few spots based on their SAT/ACT ranges.</p>
<p>In CA, the NMFs that chose to go to in-state publics picked Berkeley over UCLA by a good margin. This explains the “overperformance” of Berkeley and “underperformance” of UCLA. UCLA suffers from the zero-sum game with Berkeley while Oklahoma and Alabama don’t have this problem.</p>
<p>^and don’t forget to factor in that California’s cutoff, which is where most of the UC students hail from, is 220, while Alabama’s is 209. Ok is even lower at 206.</p>
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<p>That’s one interpretation. Another is that UCLA rejected them by a large margin. UCLA’s in-state acceptance rate for the fall 2012 was less than 18%; Berkeley’s was slightly under 23%</p>
<p>It might seem ridiculous that a university would do that, but I wouldn’t doubt that UCLA would. I can easily see them rejecting these students in favor of poorer, first-generation college students or international students, who bring with them, international tuition. (in fact, increased numbers of the former might help the university politically defend increased numbers in the latter, whose acceptance rate is nearly double that of in-state students.)</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2012/fall_2012_admissions_table2.pdf[/url]”>http://www.ucop.edu/news/factsheets/2012/fall_2012_admissions_table2.pdf</a></p>
<p>^I think you were stretching. The reason why UCLA has lower in-state admit rate is simply because UCLA is just more popular across wider range of students, including the underperforming ones. More of those B+/A- types think they have a chance at UCLA but not Berkeley. This is supported by the system-wide data on the net. It does not seem riduculous; it is ridiculous that UCLA would reject NMFs in favor of poorer students and internationals when there are many others they can reject. If anything, Berkeley would likely be the one more concerned about being politically correct anyway. By the way, I think it’s easier to politically defend increased numbers of internationals during a budget crisis than to explain rejections of those NMFs when the admission is supposedly to be pretty stats driven.</p>
<p>But Bluebayou did point out something I forgot about. AL and OK have the unfair advantage of having significantly lower cutoffs.</p>
<p>* Here are the schools that enroll the most National Merit Scholars (subtracting those students who won through corporate and school sponsorship).*</p>
<p>Why are you subtracting those who become National Merit Scholars thru corporate of school sponsorship?</p>
<p>But Bluebayou did point out something I forgot about. AL and OK have the unfair advantage of having significantly lower cutoffs.</p>
<p>??? Yes, these states have lower cutoffs, but are you suggesting that their enrolling NMFs are all or nearly all instate?</p>
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<p>Not necessarily, but for getting instate NMF in CA it makes a difference. Fewer NMF will look to going OOS to CA schools due to no price break from the school. </p>
<p>NM is hardly an equalizer for the top of the top kids and never will be as long as they have different cut off rates for different states. The OP seemed to think that one test was the be all, end all definition of tippity top students nationally (and the schools NMS opt to go to), but that logic has some very serious flaws.</p>
<p>So far, it appears everyone else can discern the difference, so it’s just one pushing the fallacy.</p>
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<p>Keep in mind that Hopkins enrolls 5K undergraduates to Alabama’s 28K.
Also, the bar for achieving NMSF status may be lower in Alabama than it is in many of the states that feed Johns Hopkins.</p>
<p>Williams College, with a mere 2200 students, enrolls more NM scholars than either of these (39 in 2011-12).</p>
<p>The NM numbers are larger than the Nobel prize numbers or the Rhodes numbers, but for most schools they still represent a very small segment of the population.</p>
<p>National Merit Scholars are for students taking SAT, right? What about schools with applicants submitting predominantly ACT scores?</p>
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<p>At Alabama and Oklahoma, ‘No’, since the purpose of their MN scholarships is to buy high test scores from OOS.</p>
<p>But, I would submit that the “nearly all” NMF’s at the UCs are instate (with its higher state cutoff). Plus, UC dropped its participation in the Merit program several years ago, so OOS’ers are expected to pay sticker.</p>
<p>“so OOS’ers are expected to pay sticker.” </p>
<p>Which makes them on par with most expensive private schools in the country. :D</p>
<p>Williams College, with a mere 2200 students, enrolls more NM scholars than either of these (39 in 2011-12).</p>
<p>These stats are misleading since they’re not counting all of the NMScholars. Bama enrolled over 200 NMScholars last fall, and about 182 the previous fall. </p>
<p>As for UC’s expecting OOS students to pay “sticker”, that hasn’t been true recently. The better UCs have been giving OOS students need-based aid “up to” the cost of instate. So, an OOS student can get need-based aid up to about $32k. The remaining costs would be FAR BELOW sticker.</p>
<p>goldenboy, would you mind terribly explaining the rationale for excluding school-sponsored and corporate-sponsored awards from this list? Students receiving a corporate-sponsored award still enroll somewhere (actually, how would you know what to exclude by the fact that it was a corporate-sponsored award?). Students receiving a school-sponsored award did in fact enroll in that school - from my understanding, and please correct if wrong, the designation of a school-sponsored award is primarily an accounting method. Why exclude? Some of the schools offer large scholarships to NMFs, but the core NMSC award is fairly small by comparison. Is your intent to show enrollment by students who didn’t otherwise receive large scholarships directly resulting from NM status? Places where they enrolled by choice rather than because of $$?</p>
<p>To quote the link: </p>
<p>“An asterisk indicates that Merit Scholarships whose scholarships are sponsored by the institution are included; the number sponsored by the college is shown in parenthesis.”</p>
<p>Keyword: parenthesis.</p>
<p>So as an example, Bowdoin is displayed as:</p>
<p>36* Bowdoin College (32)</p>
<p>That would mean Bowdoin had 32 sponsored by the college (with 4 being corporate; 32 + 4 = 36).</p>
<p>But you subtracted 36 from 32 and would list Bowdoin as 4. </p>
<p>So basically you excluded rationale agent? I am confused between the difference between the right and left hand. Does this mean that an institution does or doesn’t? If we just did the institutions:</p>
<p>Emory wouldn’t be 9 but 34.</p>
<p>Tufts wouldn’t be 8 but 41.</p>
<p>Vanderbilt (where your initial math wrong; with your logic it’s 50, not 40) would be 137.</p>
<p>Wake would still be 1. </p>
<p>And Carnegie Mellon would still be 33.</p>
<p>Etc.</p>
<p>This paints a different picture, especially since you are excluding higher incentives / the whole thing. So yes, “tip-top students” do go to those schools you disregarded (anyone can paint an awesome picture by skewing data; for example, let’s only look at the yield rate of an institution and rank accordingly. BYU for the wolf).</p>
<p>But more importantly, the above poster is correct that there is no difference between the source–it’s an accounting thing.</p>
<p>So I am not sure what you are trying to do. But then again, this is a pretty dumb thing to evaluate an institution on.</p>
<p>All that means is that they are national merit and the institution gave them a scholarship. I am confused. You are disregarding schools that aid students via NMF put then applaud other institutions such as OU that do that? </p>
<p>You realize the University of Oklahoma gives a full ride to all NMF, right? </p>
<p>The problem is I don’t know how to evaluate this data–because the left and right aren’t easily explained or parsed out or contextualized. Sooo…yeahhhh</p>
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<p>In 2011-12, Alabama enrolled 33 NM finalists who received one of the 2,500 National Merit $2,500 Scholarships awarded on a state representational basis. They enrolled another 208 NM finalists who received a scholarship sponsored by the University of Alabama. If those 208 finalists had not chosen to enroll at Alabama, they would not necessarily have gotten the “scholar” distinction at all.</p>
<p>That’s not to deny the significance of being a finalist (with or without a monetary award), but if we want to use NM scholarships as a metric for comparing colleges, then we should be comparing apples to apples. The 2,500 NM scholarships are the “apples” the OP chose to compare. At Alabama in 2011-12 there were 33 of them. If we want to count all the finalists who chose to enroll at Alabama, then we should compare that number to the number of finalists who chose to enroll at all other schools.</p>
<p>I don’t believe any data outside of NMF is actually relevant, i.e., what scholarship they ended up with in the end.</p>
<p>A kid makes NMF - his mom works for Chevron, Chevron gives 2501$ an year.</p>
<p>A kid makes NMF - lists texas A&M, and they give big bucks including one saying National Merit.</p>
<p>A kid makes NMF - lists Harvard, does not change it at all.</p>
<p>national Merit has already contacted Chevron and reserved the kid’s scholarship which actually amounts to 10k over 4 years. So their own 2500 is no longer relevant.</p>
<p>National Merit has agreement with Texas A&M that the merit money listed as national merit is a little better over 4 years than their own 2500 and the student has to choose one or the other. A kid with high SAT won’t know which is a bigger number? I have seen several schools list this 1k per year scholarship with verbage clearly stating that they can only accept 2500 or 1k per year.</p>
<p>NMSC knows harvard does not care who made national merit and does not even bother recognizing it. They know that kid is probably quite good but won’t get a penny because his mom or dad did not work for a corp that gave money, but the kid should be recognized as a scholar. Lets keep on the front burner and give money.</p>