<p>Did truth123 cite outdated numbers or am I missing something? When I click on his link, the numbers I see are:</p>
<p>UChicago: 303
Harvard: 268
USC: 263
University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa: 241
Northwestern: 236
Washington U. in St. Louis: 206
Yale: 206
Stanford: 195
University of Oklahoma: 194
Vanderbilt: 187
Princeton: 181
MIT:160
Rice: 147
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities: 143</p>
<p>To be fair, a portion of total NMFs while aiming at “lottery” schools, use a school with large NMF merit award (e.g. USC, U Alabama) as fallback. Because of NMC rule, a NMF can only receive one of the 3 type of awards. Therefore, the safest for him to do is to opt out of running for NMC’s $2,500, wait to choose his first choice school until after all his college decisions come out. For these NMFs, they will not be NMS if they end up at a non NMS sponsor school like Harvard, but will be NMS at a sponsor school like UChicago. Not sure how many of them, but the counts definitely contribute to a higher number of NMFs in sponsor schools across the board.</p>
<p>National Merit Scholarship site just uploaded this new data set for 2012 this afternoon. truth123 has more statistics to do.</p>
<p>Thanks, ww2015! That explains why the numbers were different when I clicked on the link last night. So UChicago has strengthened its 1st place position in both overall NMS and per capita NMS.</p>
<p>Top 3 in total NMS: </p>
<h1>1 UChicago (303)</h1>
<h1>2 Harvard (268)</h1>
<h1>3 USC (263)</h1>
<p>Top 3 in per capita NMS (divide total NMS by size of current freshman class): </p>
<h1>1 UChicago - 19.84% (303/1527)</h1>
<h1>2 Harvard - 16.10% (268/1665)</h1>
<h1>3 Rice - 15.72% (147/935)</h1>
<p>It’s also interesting to look at the increase in NMS from last year:</p>
<h1>1 University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa (+60)</h1>
<h1>2 Stanford (+56)</h1>
<h1>3 UChicago (+48)</h1>
<p>Conversely, the top 2010-2011 NMS schools with the biggest decrease:</p>
<h1>1 Auburn: (-119)</h1>
<h1>2 Vanderbilt (-39)</h1>
<h1>3 Texas A&M (-23)</h1>
<p>Truth123, please check my numbers.</p>
<p>The amount of aid awarded seems to have something to do with how many NMS a school gets to attend, even though it probably matters a lot less at the highly selective schools where there’s no award or the awards are much smaller (e.g. UChicago where the award is $1-2K). Somehow I seem to remember that before 2008 University of Florida had one of the highest number of NMS with an award of around $5k/year (more than the tuition and fees at the time). They did a study and found out that the average GPA of those students wasn’t significantly different from the rest of the students they admitted therefore the award was reduced drastically and I believe the number of NMS was greatly reduced too (and not the GPA of the incoming class either).</p>
<p>Just want to echo MD Mom for the benefit of future readers–</p>
<p>A NMF can change the first choice school as many times as they want up until a fairly late deadline, although a few schools have earlier deadlines for their own scholarships. It is worth a bit of effort to understand the rules.</p>
<p>For example, DS notified NMC that his first choice was “safety school A” in Jan because students who made that school their first choice by Feb 1 (or so) were eligible for a very large merit scholarship. Then, he changed it again to UChicago after he had been accepted and decided to attend. Not a big deal, but faxing in the form was worth $4000. Taking the UChicago sponsored scholarship was worth $1500 more than a NMC scholarship would have been.</p>
<p>There is the notion out there that making a school the first choice is a way of “expressing interest”. I have no idea how much weight that carries, but I suspect not very much, especially at very elite schools.</p>
<p>@motherbear, My D decided which school to attend the very last day before deposits were due. After a few months traveling to visit 6 Universities , it was intense. I think she just forgot about the NMF rules along the way. UChicago send her a certificate with a School Merit Scholarship couple of weeks after her acceptance.The only one of the several Universities that accepted her. We were nicely surprised, since we do not applied for Financial Aid. However, it did not influence her decision to attend. Regardless, I’m very proud of her NMF achievement .</p>
<p>GoodDaddy - that is correct. If you are awarded a UChicago grant of $50,000 for example and end up qualifying for the UChicago National Merit Scholarship, your UChicago grant will drop to $48,000 and you will receive also the $2,000 NM scholarship. Basically, UChicago is only going to give you the $50,000.</p>
<p>In addition to notes by motherbear and mommaof5 regarding NMS money, although UChicago sponsored NMS award ($1000 or $2,000 per year) will reduce school’s need based grant, the one time $2,500 NMC sponsored award is considered as outside scholarship and can be used to reduce EFC for university scholarship recipients. So if you already know you are going to Uchicago and receive both need based and merit based scholarship from the school, you should opt to run for NMC sponsored award. Most of the time, it is hard to plan out this way though because of uncertainty and timing of the whole application process.</p>
<p>YogaMom1, when I click truth123’s link, I don’t see the numbers you posted. Where can I see them? On the website, the icon shows the document is for 2011-12, but inside the document, it says it is for 2010-11.</p>
<p>Good daddy, I had that happened to me last night also :). Try refresh button in your browser. If it still not working, try with clean browser history.</p>
<p>happyfit, thanks! refresh button (F5) shows the correct document!!</p>
<p>@GoodDaddy. I hope you understand what the numbers that they report “means” now. As you can see even though the NMS Corporation reports Harvard, Yale, Princeton numbers of National Merit Finalists/Scholars that matriculate each year…none of the students at those schools receive any “national merit scholarship” money. I believe this is where Chicago has some advantage especially for those families that make in the “upper middle class” to upper range of income…these top students can get “pure” merit scholarships from Chicago or “national merit scholarships” or combination of both to help the families out.</p>
<p>Now, for those families that make below something like 70,000 are completely taken care of by the Odyssey Scholarships…and up to 90,000 some students can have no loans at all…</p>
<p>gravitas2, according to mommaof5 and happyfit, I won’t get this NMF scholarship since it’s going to reduce my need-based school grant. Now we hope to get $2,500 NMC scholarship.</p>
<p>^^I hope so too. I believe the “net” cost to the family should be the same. I know Chicago works hard to try and give the benefit of the doubt in trying to help families in supporting their children’s education…this is what we alumni and administration have recommended over the years. Those of us that have been helped especially getting a Chicago education basically for free many years ago are trying to give back what we can…</p>
<p>…that is what the Odyssey scholarships, individual merit “named” scholarships, national merit scholarships, and grants are all about…</p>
<p>truth123’s original posting is totally false. The University of Chicago had only 86 = 303 minus 217 true National Merit Scholars. The U. of C. sponsors nominated finalists with Chicago awarded merit scholarships if they attend the University of Chicago. Not all individuals who are nominated as finalists become National Merit Scholars. It is just a way of inflating figures. For example UAlabama - Tuscaloosa shows 241 compared to Princeton’s 181. However, when you look at the asterisk next to UA - Tuscaloosa, you’ll see that 208 were institutional sponsored merit scholarships, which leaves only 33. Who believe Tuscaloosa has more National Merit Scholars than Stanford 195, Yale 206, Princeton 181 ? </p>
<p>See page 39 of <a href=“http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf[/url]”>http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf</a> </p>
<p>The Correct Totals of actual National Merit Scholars are:</p>
<p>1) Harvard 268
2) Yale 206
3) Stanford 195
4) Princeton 181
5) MIT 160
6) Penn 117
7) Duke 112
8) Columbia 91
9) Chicago 86
10) Brown 79
11) Dartmouth 76</p>
<p>Sorry, nice try!</p>
<p>Special thanks to gravitas2 for clarifying what the numbers mean on the first page.</p>
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<p>Poplicola, you are right. My daughter was a NMF last year and a current student, and because she did not received any National Merit Scholarship from UChicago it does not mean she is not listed as one by the University or the program. She did received a School Merit Scholarship.</p>
<p>rhg3rd, I understand that there are three ways to become National Merit Scholar (NMS) - 1) scholarship by the university, 2) scholarship by the sponsored company, 3) scholarship by NM Corporation. So, I don’t know what you meant by ‘TRUE’ NMS. The numbers you see in front of each school name are for all the NMS who enrolled at the university. By the way, they are all NMFs, so I think it matters more.</p>
<p>^ The 2383 NMS scholarships awarded by the the National Merit Scholarship Corporation (see p. 34) are applicable wherever the recipient chooses to attend - be it Harvard, Chicago, Columbia or Dartmouth. Merit aid is applicable only at the institution that awards it. I presume that the few corporate sponsored ones are applicable anywhere, but having pull at the awarding corporation determines who gets them.</p>