Where the National Merit Scholars are

Parents Forum
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<p>Re: Oklahoma--Highest number of NMFs of any PUBLIC university in proportion to its total enrollment. Florida and Texas are much larger schools. Harvard, Yale, etc. are PRIVATE schools. </p>

<p>Why would anyone consider Oklahoma? Just visit the school and see if it fits. My son went with dad--neither of them wanted to make the visit, just thought they ought to check it out because of the scholarship offer. S is a small school, no sports type. Dad is ivy grad who likes to think he's not easily impressed. They came home raving about the place. Nice campus, very friendly people. (S is still deciding between OK and a small private religious school that gives no financial aid).</p>

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<p>My daughter, also a finalist, also picked Swarthmore ED. And, like son of momof3sons, above, DD also received many unsolicited offers. Of course, we are still waiting to hear if she actually gets a NM scholarship. fyi: against ALL advice except Swat's, she applied ED even though financial aid was important to us and the unsolicited offers were pouring in. Swat encouraged her to go ED, saying aid for ED & RD would be the same and generous. It was. We are delighted.</p>

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<p>Princeton. RD. But had no NMF offers because did not apply to schools that did. Had Berkeley and UCSB Regents.</p>

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<p>My son, a Nat. Merit Scholar, chose Harvard EA. My daughter, a finalist, chose Brown (deferred EA, accepted RD). Like Alumother's D., neither applied to any schools that made such offers.</p>

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<p>S,NMF has picked U South Carolina due to a specific major where they are ranked top 4 (Sports Management)and the genuine friendliness of the institution .They've come up with an amazing package which includes the Lieber Scholarship (for NMF"s) worth $6,000 a year and the McNair Scholarship,which for him as a finalist but not a named scholar is worth $11,000 a year. They also reduce out of state tuition to in state rates,which means he has more $ than needed for tuition so room and board and possibly books will be covered.They also get a laptop from the McNair.</p>

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<p>S, a NMF, is a very happy first-year student at UC Berkeley.</p>

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<p>D, an NMF, is attending Smith. None of the schools that made her final cut gave a dime for NM status. Karma.</p>

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<p>I was NMS last year - put Georgetown as my first choice, ended up getting waitlisted there, go to Dartmouth. Didn't really matter, since neither gave me money (though i was able to put NMCorp. scholarship towards 1st year at Dart)</p>

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<p>S was NMF last year, chose to go to New Mexico Military Institute --sponsored by West Point as a 'civilian prep' .... has appointment to West Point -USMA for class of 2010 and will enter in JUne</p>

<p>On another thread it was pointed out that the NMS Program is simply a one test scholarship program. Having said that its an honor. </p>

<p>S wanted to be finiacially prudent--even though we didnt push this, we could afford to pay anywhere. I will give the results below --obviously we are from Texas, so that sways.. but as someone interested in Engineering, you quickly gravitate to large public universites</p>

<p>Applied and accepted</p>

<p>UT-Austin --scholarships all merit of about1/2 total costs
Texas Tech- $62,000 for four years, essentially a full ride
Purdue- $13,000 over 4 years
Ga Tech- accepted, but no money</p>

<p>just FYI, if thinking of aid etc</p>

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<p>zxc123:</p>

<p>thanks for listing money offers given for your NMF child. it's interesting to see what kind of offers were given, even if a child goes elsewhere.</p>

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<p>The National Merit Scholarship website (<a href="http://www.nationalmerit.org/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.nationalmerit.org/&lt;/a&gt;) has information regarding National Merit scholarships and university enrollment. To access the relevant information at this website, click on "Annual Report 2004-05" listed on the left at the National Merit website. Then go to p. 28, where the individual university information for 2005 is listed.</p>

<p>There are dozens of colleges and universities that host National Merit scholars, but obviously some schools stand out because they have so many National Merit awardees. Based on my review (the website has small print for my old eyes, so please correct me if I missed something), here are the current top 15 colleges and universities based on enrollment of 2005 National Merit awardees:</p>

<ol>
<li> Harvard College - 287</li>
<li> University of Texas at Austin - 262</li>
<li> Yale University - 232</li>
<li> University of Florida at Gainesville - 230</li>
<li> Stanford University - 194</li>
<li> University of Southern California - 190</li>
<li> University of Chicago - 187</li>
<li> Princeton University - 180</li>
<li> Northwestern University - 174</li>
<li>Washington University in St. Louis - 169</li>
<li>Rice University - 163</li>
<li>Arizona State University - 156</li>
<li>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill - 138</li>
<li>Texas A&M University - 136</li>
<li>MIT - 131</li>
</ol>

<p>Many commenters have noted the difference in size of these schools so I checked the school websites for 2005 enrollment information and calculated the percentage of 2005 National Merit scholars for each school. Here are the results for selected colleges and universities - primarily the state schools since much of the discussion in this thread has focused on those schools:</p>

<p>(Please note that sometimes I could not find 2005 enrollment figures and in those cases I used 2004 numbers as noted.)</p>

<p>Arizona State University:
Total 2005 enrollment = 51,612 (7,706 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 156
Percentages: .3% (2.02%)</p>

<p>Harvard College:
Total 2005 enrollment = 19,650 <a href="I%20couldn't%20find%20freshman%20enrollment%20statistics">6,650 undergraduate and 13,000 graduate</a>
National Merit scholars = 287
Percentages: 1.46% of total enrollment, 4.31% of all undergraduates (if we assume freshmen are 1/4 of total undergraduates, the freshman enrollment would be 1,662 and the freshman percentage would be 17.2%)</p>

<p>Rice University:
Total 2005 enrollment = 2,933 <a href="727%20freshman,%202004">2005 enrollment</a>
National Merit scholars = 163
Percentages: 5.5% (22.42%)</p>

<p>Texas A&M University:
Total 2005 enrollment = 44,435 (7,068 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 136
Percentages: .30% (1.92%)</p>

<p>University of Arizona:
Total 2005 enrollment = 37,036 (5,974 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 103
Percentages: .278% (1.72%)</p>

<p>University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA):
Total 2005 enrollment = 35,625 <a href="3,432%20freshmen%20in%202004">2005 enrollment</a>
National Merit scholars = 113
Percentages: .317% (3.29%)</p>

<p>University of Florida:
Total 2005 enrollment = 50,512 (6,334 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 230
Percentages: .455% (3.63%)</p>

<p>University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill:
Total 2005 enrollment = 27,276 (3,751 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 138
Percentages: .505% (3.68%)</p>

<p>University of Oklahoma:
Total 2005 enrollment = 19,644 (4,360 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 146
Percentages: .743% (3.34%)</p>

<p>University of Southern California:
Total 2005 enrollment = 32,160 (2,741 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 190 (although USC's website lists 194)
Percentages: .590% (6.93%)</p>

<p>University of Texas at Austin:
Total 2005 enrollment = 49,696 (7,364 freshmen)
National Merit scholars = 262
Percentages: .527% (3.56%)</p>

<p>University of Tulsa:
Total 2005 enrollment = 4,174 <a href="675%20freshmen,%202005">2004 enrollment</a>
National Merit scholars = 83
Percentages: 1.99% (12.30%)</p>

<p>Yale University:
Total 2005 enrollment = 11,483 <a href="I%20couldn't%20find%20freshman%20enrollment%20statistics">5,316 undergraduate, 6,167 graduate</a>
National Merit scholars = 232
Percentages: 2.02% <a href="If%20we%20assume%20that%20freshmen%20are%201/4%20of%20all%20undergraduates,%20the%20freshman%20percentage%20would%20be%2017.45%">4.36% of all undergraduates</a></p>

<p>My overall impression is that schools nationwide are making a concerted effort to attract National Merit scholars and, as a result, there is more parity in where these students are attending college. Most schools are attracting students by offering generous scholarship packages. As the parent of a National Merit finalist, we received dozens of unsolicited letters from schools all over the nation offering generous scholarships. Most of our offers - such as from OU, UT-Dallas, TCU, Tulsa, ASU, and Texas A&M - were substantial enough that our student's entire four-year education (tuition, books, room, board, and more) would be paid in full. Texas Tech University offered that and the possibility of paid graduate school. Others were less generous but still good - while the University of Texas at Austin's scholarship package only covered tuition, UT has excellent honors programs that make it attractive. </p>

<p>I know I've omitted many good schools but it was time-consuming to gather this information and I need to do other things. I hope this is helpful or at least interesting.</p>

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<p>DRJ4 </p>

<p>thank you very much for the previous post. Thanks for the time it took to gather all the info. It is interesting!!! :)</p>

<p>I'd like to find out whether UNC Chapel Hill offers much for NMF</p>

53

<p>JLauer95:</p>

<p>We receivee a letter from UNC-Chapel Hill last year that suggested our son would qualify for a good scholarship because of his NMF status. However, we never followed up on this so I don't know any details. I've known people that attended UNCCH and it's clearly an excellent school.</p>

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<p>jlauer - as drj4 mentioned, nmf's receive letters and e-mails from schools not always noted as the big national ment recruiters. some schools while not actually " participating schools" with National Merit do acknowledge the national merit finalists and semifinalists and do offer generous scholarships, sometimes referred to as "presidential" scholarships, etc. two of our in-state publics offered either full-ride or full-tuition. would suggest any of the nmf's on cc.........be sure to check with the publics (if public is an option they'd consider) and also the publics in the bordering states. sometimes there are agreements, i think, about reduced tuition for students from bordering states. </p>

<p>UCF is an active recruiter of nmf's as well as Oklahoma, Oklahoma State, Univ. of Arizona, and Arizona State. Also Texas Tech and Texas A & M. I think Alabama and Arkansas have also been mentioned in other posts. The UCF offer is very generous.</p>

<p>Cathymee - congrats to your son on choosing his school. what a nice offer from them to him.</p>

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<p>Condor30 has a good point. Most of the very generous scholarships our son was offered were not National Merit scholarships. Instead, they were "Presidential" or "Chancellors" scholarships that were apparently offered by the schools to National Merit scholars as enrollment incentives. </p>

<p>Our son ended up at UT-Austin in the Plan II Honors program. At UT, National Merit finalists get a UT National Merit scholarship but UT also reduces tuition for out-of-state students to in-state levels so the National Merit scholarship covers his full tuition. I suspect that several state schools offer similar incentives if they don't offer the really generous scholarships discussed earlier in this thread.</p>

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<p>thanks Condor
UCF offers a really fabulous package for NMF's that I would recommend anyone eligible look into seriously.They are trying to woo finalists and offer some great incentives.they have some big time donors and lots of local corporate support..By the way, they just got approved for a medical school so perhaps tie-ins to combined college/med school admissions arent too far in the future!!</p>

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<p>Sorry to be so dense, but UCF is what school?????? :)</p>

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<p>University of Central Florida. </p>

<p>Our S was offered $2000 NMS from WUSTL but has also been accepted by CMU which is where he wants to go; haven't gotten their finaid yet but they aren't a NMF school and we have a high EFC so don't expect anything for that reason. None of his other schools of interest give NMF $$ either. But the certificate and newspaper mention were nice!</p>

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<p>My son (graduated from hs in 2003) picked Georgetown, SFS. It was the best choice for him. His financial aid package is excellent, though no money for NMF status.</p>

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<p>dogwood: was his package based on need (low EFC) or was it based on merit?</p>