Which Universities Enroll The Most Academic Superstars? (NMS Study)

College Search & Selection
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<p>I thought this would be an interesting alternative to the UNSWR rankings in showing where the highest concentration of high school academic overachievers are attending. To become a full-fledged National Merit Scholar, a student must score in the top 1% on the PSAT to advance to the Semifinalist stage and then demonstrate excellent in GPA/SAT/Extracurriculars to actually win the NMSC awards of $2,500.</p>

<p><a href="http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf"&gt;http://www.nationalmerit.org/annual_report.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Here are some of the schools with the largest numbers of National Merit Scholars who came with outside (non-school) National Merit funding:</p>

<p>Harvard 268
Yale 178
MIT 177
Stanford 176
Princeton 162
Duke 139
Penn 121
UC Berkeley 109
University of Chicago 97
Columbia 85
Brown 71
Cornell 69
UT Austin 67
Northwestern 66
Vanderbilt 66
Rice 64
Dartmouth 60
University of Michigan 56
USC 53
WUSTL 45
Caltech 42
UNC Chapel Hill 37
UVA 36
Georgia Tech 33
Carnegie Mellon 31
Williams 30
Northeastern 29
Johns Hopkins 28
University of Minnesota 28
Texas A&M 24
Brigham Young 23
Georgetown 23
University of Oklahoma 22
University of Illinois 21
University of Pittsburgh 21
Baylor 20
Case Western 20
NYU 20
University of Kentucky 20</p>

2

<p>Everyone should note how many smart students there are at the best public schools in the country like Berkeley, Texas, and Michigan. You can replicate an academic experience at some of these public flagships that is very similar to what you would find at some of the better private schools in the country.</p>