I just looked it up. About 50% get some type of scholarship. Only 2500 are the non-corporate, non-school sponsored. 4000 are the school-sponsored ones. So since Ivies don’t give any merit at all, this would affect their reported numbers. Still not clear why their numbers plummeted around 10 years ago. Did Ivies used to give national merit money?
Not sure about the Ivies but you can really see the effect on the numbers of the decision to stop giving NM money by looking at Texas. They stopped giving NM money in 2009, and had an immediate drop of about 80% in their NMS numbers. They went from about 250-300 NMSs per year in the decade before the change to 54 in the first year after the change (and 53 to 92 in every year since).
No, of the ~15,000 NMFs each year, only 2,500 students are selected to get that scholarship. So only ~16%. It is a competitive process based on a holistic review of all the NMFs.
ETA: sorry, I see you already answered your own question.
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U of Chicago may not give NMF scholarships, but in our experience they marketed HEAVILY to semifinalists, which may put it on the radar of more of those students.
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As I told my son during his college search process, being a NMF is largely pointless…unless you’re looking at attending one of the schools with a large NMF scholarship, then it’s the most important thing in the world. He’s at UCF now, but even if he hadn’t been a NMSF, there’s a decent chance he would have ended up there (assuming some sort of decent OOS scholarship) because of the strength of their competitive programming team and CS program. So for him, being interested in a school that also offered a generous NMF scholarship ended up perfect.
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Yes exactly. UT-Austin used to convert all of its NMFs into NMSs by giving school-sponsored National Merit scholarships to all its NMFs. But now it functions just like the Ivys, not giving National Merit scholarships to anyone. I suspect that UT-Austin has a lot of “hidden” NMFs who would be “revealed” if only UT-Austin still cared about National Merit scholars.
My daughter (2021 grad) is one of the 145 NMS’s at UPenn. She received the $2500 scholarship. Out of 13 NMFs in her HS class I think only 2 got this award.
I think only insiders at those schools know for sure, but I have theories.
I think Harvard just stopped caring about NMF status. In the past it issued press releases about its top-in-the-nation NMS numbers, but about 20 years ago college admit rates started dropping fast and Harvard instead switched to issuing more press releases about its ultra-low admit rate.
During the same stretch of time, UChicago made a big change in leadership. Previous leadership had been content with the knowledge that UChicago had first-rate academics and did not seek validation in appearances. But the new leadership went on a mission to stop being seen as a backup school to the Ivy league. So it heavily courted NMFs and made sure that each NMF “converted” into a NMS by offering unlimited NMS scholarships (while Harvard offered none.) It started making a big deal about its number of NMSs, and eventually when it was able to lower acceptance and improve yield through heavy use of EDI and EDII it started advertising those numbers too. Basically, the Ivys had long worked to create a “scarcity” or “luxury goods” mystique, and UChicago decided to join the game and play the best it could.
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I think that those NMFs who, like your daughter, are strong enough be awarded a scholarship directly from the NMSC (only the top ~16% of NMFs as judged holistically) really have “the whole package” and are especially likely to end up at MIT, Stanford, and the Ivys.
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Or it may depend more what state they’re from. My dd was awarded the NMSC $2500 scholarship but went to our state school for the COA package. Pretty much every NMF we know went to one of our state schools.
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Yes, you are right! What I should have said is those who are strong enough to be awarded a scholarship directly from the NMSC really have the ‘whole package’ and are especially strong candidates for MIT, Stanford and the Ivys and more likely to end up there if this is something they choose to pursue.
It really is influenced by factors such as regional culture and having strong state schools to choose from. And of course the whole donut hole factor.
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UTD claims that according to National Merit Scholarship Corporation, they have the “Most National Merit Scholars in Texas”
I’ve even seen a billboard touting this in Austin but I have no idea which year the got their figures from, presumably the most recent available data.
Percentage of 1st year class would be a nice way to rank. It would give tiny HMC a chance 