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<p>Hm…I’m not sure what I did originally, but when I was notified that I had won they told me I had to pick a 1st choice school. They said it didn’t matter which one.</p>
<p>Yeah, that makes sense. But that was AFTER you’d been given the NMSC award, if I’m following correctly. </p>
<p>Assuming that the rules 10 years ago were the same as they are now, if you’d put down that merit-awarding school as your choice when you first received the form, you’d have been given the award by that school and would then be out of the running for the NMSC award.</p>
<p>wis75 asked upthread about wanting to know about how many NMSF & NMFs there were whether or not they received money.</p>
<p>Nationally:
Roughly 50,000 students who took the PSAT in their junior year make the cut for NMSC Commended status. That cutoff number is the same across the board and usually falls somewhere in the 96-97% nationally. College Board releases those percentiles in their “understanding the (year) PSAT/NMSQT Scores” pdf. The tweaking of the state numbers comes when NMSC decides what the cutoff is for each individual state. It isn’t necessarily the top 1% of PSAT takers in each state, it seems to be connected to the percentage of HS graduates in that state compared to the # of HS graduates nationally. This cut to NMSF status usually ends up with about 16,000. After filing in paperwork, sending in SAT scores to confirm your PSAT score, a transcript etc. about 15,000 make the cut for NMF. </p>
<p>State level:
There is a chart in the annual report published by National Merit that lists how many program entrants, commended students and NMSF there are for each state. It’s on page 9 of the pdf this year (or page 7 if you’re looking at the page numbers printed in the brochure) It’s at nationalmerit.org</p>
<p>NMSC is a private corporation, and just like private companies don’t have to report financials to the SEC as public companies do, NMSC doesn’t have to tell anyone their methodology.</p>
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<p>15281 - 8330 = 6951 NM Finalists received no awards (43 %).</p>
<p>Guess which colleges have these students.</p>
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<p>Yes, that’s correct.</p>
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<p>That’s a crazy rule, especially since most students don’t know where they are going (or even where they will be admitted) when they fill out that form. I guess my laziness paid off!</p>
<p>“National Merit Finalists are eligible for one “official” NM scholarship. So let’s take a hypothetical NMF who decides that their absolute first choice school is Alabama, bar none. Alabama offers an exceptionally generous guaranteed scholarship to NMFs who specify to NMF that Alabama is their first choice school. Once the student tells NMF that Alabama is their number 1 choice, if Alabama admits them, then Alabama will immediately offer the student the Alabama-sponsored NM scholarship. At that point, that student is finished with the NM process. NM and Alabama consider them an NM Scholar. For purposes of this discussion, the student is now ineligible for NMSC’s $2500 award. Not that they care, because they’ve got a free ride.” </p>
<p>Slithery Tove has it exactly correct. Students can ONLY receive ONE NATIONAL MERIT sponsored scholarship, regardless of whether it is paid for by NMSF or by a corportaion or by a college. Those $2500 awards are distributed AFTER a student has matriculated at a college. So if a student who was originally notified that he wil be “awarded” the $2500 award decides to go to any college that “sponsors” NMF’s AND jhe then notifies NMSF of this decision, which can be done as late as mid May, the $2500 award is withdrawn and is replaced by the sponsoring colleges’ National Merit award $$. There is no data about how many students end up actually receiving the one time NMSF $2500 award, nor is there any information available as to where they end up going to college.</p>
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<p>2,500 + 4,772 + 1058 = 8330</p>
<p>This 8330 matches the sum 8330 on page 40 of the report:</p>
<p>Scholars
enrolled
3,396 private institutions</p>
<h2>4,934 public institutions</h2>
<p>8,330</p>
<p>Colleges
attended
214 private institutions</p>
<h2>145 public institutions</h2>
<p>359</p>
<p>So 8330 scholars are in the list “Colleges and universities enrolling the 2011 Merit Scholar awardees”.</p>
<p>No head is uncounted.</p>
<p>You can change your number one school into the summer. Most people do not need to wait that long, but it can be done.</p>
<p>The impression I have of NM Corporation is that it wants as many students as possible to benefit from NM status. They are very nice if you ever have a question or need to change anything.</p>
<p>In previous years, I used to watch NM scholarships very carefully and have not done it this year.</p>
<p>Here is my take.</p>
<p>[ol]
[<em>]There is a correlation between the PSAT score and SAT score, and generally very high SAT scores are needed to get into top institutions. So by inference, many entrants in top 20 schools (as rated by USNWR), have generally had high PSAT scores.
[</em>]Generally higher the PSAT score, the higher chances of getting a NMSC scholarship (the $2500). However it is state proportionate, hence $2500 scholarships are distributed across different states based on # of HS students in that cohort group.
[<em>]Further as pointed out, many students who get into the top institutions come from families who can given them good opportunities, and often the ability to afford these opportunities come from working for large corporations that sponsor awards.
[</em>]Smaller institutions and state schools compete for students with high scores in SAT by offering very lucrative NM scholarships. Arizona State is a great example. They have 124 NM Scholars, of which they have sponsored 102. University of Alabama has 181 of which they have sponsored 144. Arizona State has about 56,000 plus students, and they enrolled about 6200 students in the fall semester of 2010 (they enroll for other semesters, have transfer students etc.). Let us assume that the freshman class is about 10,000 students.
[<em>]So if you take a proportionate basis, 102 out 10,000 (which would be a low number) is about 1%. On the other hand Caltech admits about 225 students and they had 36 NM scholars, or more than 15% of the class.
[</em>]What does all this mean? In my opinion, really nothing. Yes, top institutions get a lot of national merit scholars. Top institutions also generally require high scores in standardized tests to get in (before anyone flames me, high scores in standardized tests are usually a necessary but not sufficient condition to get in top colleges). National Merit scholars have high scores in standardized tests. So what is the surprise that many national merit scholars go top institutions.
[li]National Merit scholars also go to institutions like Arizona State (which is ranked 132) or University of Alabama (ranked 75) as these institutions give good scholarships to National Merit scholars. In other words, when they cannot compete on prestige or exclusivity, they offer money and to many middle class students, it is a god send.[/ol]</p>[/li]
<p>Yes Harvard gets many National Merit Scholars, but they also some of the highest scorers in standardized tests. Are standardized tests good indicators of intelligence, ability to preform in college etc? That is a totally different question.</p>
<p>For those who are interested, here is the percent of the incoming class that are NM scholars in top institutions. So Harvard may have the most number of NM scholars, but Caltech has the highest percentage. (I calculated the numbers from the common data set, so there may be some small variations)</p>
<pre><code>College Number of NMS Total Freshman admissions %age of NMS in freshman class
Harvard 248 1664 14.90%
Yale 194 1344 14.43%
Princeton 154 1312 11.74%
Stanford 139 1694 8.21%
MIT 128 1067 12.00%
Caltech 36 222 16.22%
</code></pre>
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<p>The National Merit Scholarship (the one given out by the corporation) takes all the academic factors into consideration that a college application does–grades/rigor, counselor recommendation, essay, academic achievements, and other standardized testing (SATI and SATII). They don’t care about non-academic factors.</p>
<p>So in a sense, they should be more predictive of ability to perform in college than ivy league admission because the non-academic factors do not matter.</p>
<p>BTW, I don’t think PSAT score is very predictive of ability to get the award (e.g., someone with a score of 240 wouldn’t have a big advantage over someone with a 225…)_</p>
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<p>I’m sure the corporation knows, though I don’t know whether they publicize it.</p>
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<p>The award is distributed after the person matriculates, but it is announced immediately. As I said, people who ended up getting large NMF-related awards from their university were publicized in the newspaper as being offered the $2500 award. The city newspaper had a list of everyone in the state who won.</p>
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<p>My empirical, unscientific, non official observation is that there is a correlation between the two. Yes, not every 240 in PSAT gets the NMSC scholarship, but based on my observations, higher the score the more likely the chance. Also, remember it is state proportionate. So in NJ where the cut off is high, there would be many in the 230 range. In WY, where the cut off is around 201, not many would be in the 230 range. Hence someone with a 230 in WY is very competitive. </p>
<p>Again, these are my observations, I may be wrong but I have seen a correlation (not necessarily very strong but a definite correlation.) The selection committee has to wade through about 16,000 applications in a period of about 2 months and these are people with full time jobs elsewhere and hence performance on standardized scores count. I am sure the PSAT score weighs heavily, but other factors do count. I am not sure that SAT subject tests are required in the application.</p>
<p>^The PSAT score is less important if you go to a school with a lot of competition or in the absence of well-known national academic awards. </p>
<p>I’m pretty sure they ask for SATIIs; they don’t require them but they are considered.</p>
<p>The only place the PSAT matters is for national merit. All top institutions want the SAT or ACT. They do not know about PSAT scores and do not care about it. What I am saying that high scorers in PSAT are generally high scorers in SAT.</p>
<p>The selection committee has no idea which school you are going to. Some choose to declare it at that time, some don’t. So the selection committee for NMSC’s own scholarships are the only one with access to PSAT scores.</p>
<p>Also, Corporation NM scholarships are usually given to every one who is eligible. In fact some corporations do not exhaust their scholarships and give special scholarships to those who are National Merit Finalists. Of course, there are corporations where it is competitive, most are not. Boeing for example gives it to everyone who qualifies.</p>
<p>Looking at the Annual report here is the breakdown of scholarships</p>
<p>A total of 15,283 made it NMF. Of the 15,283 finalists, 8330 got scholarships, of which more than half got it from a college</p>
<p>Corporation Scholarships 1,058 12.70%
College Sponsored Scholarships 4,772 57.29%
NMSC’s own scholarships 2,500 30.01%
Total 8,330 </p>
<p>Special Scholarships 1,276 </p>
<p>.</p>
<p>If you look this way:</p>
<p>15,283 NMF - 4,772 College Sponsored Scholarships = 10511 (69 %)</p>
<p>10511 NMF go to colleges that don’t sponsor the program. This number matters more than anything else. Which colleges get the largest parts from this pool?</p>
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<p>I was referring to high school when I said that if you go to a competitive school, the PSAT score probably isn’t highly predictive of who gets taken. If you’ve got 225 PSAT but rocked your classes at Thomas Jefferson (TJ) magnet high school, you are more likely to be taken than a person who did very well at TJ but wasn’t a total star but had a 240 PSAT.</p>
<p>I do believe that goldenboy has learned a lot from this thread.</p>
<p>This is very silly. At USoCal, you can only get a NMF scholarship if you are a NMF. Why would you turn down the 1/2 to full tuition scholarship from USC to get at $2500 scholarship from College Board. The criteria to be a NMF is if you get the letter from NMF saying YOU ARE A NMF, not which (if any) financial award you received/accepted, from the U, private corp, College Board or elsewhere.</p>
<p>One of the reasons so many NMFs from our kids’ HS went to USC was BECAUSE they gave generous merit awards. That doesn’t change their status from NMFs to something else because they chose to accept the 1/2+ to full tuition awards they received. His HS class alone sent maybe 20+ NMFs to USC the year he matriculated in 2006 & I know that there were a lot more from all over. Menloparkmom’s post #3 has more accurate numbers for USC NMFs.</p>