I know its not a ton of money and its not as prestigious as it once was, but I would like to know any current stats on students who actually won the National Merit Scholarship. Please not the ones offered to Students who join sponsoring Universities, nor the ones sponsored by corporations.
“National Merit $2500 Scholarships- Every Finalist competes for these single payment scholarships, which are awarded on a state-representational basis. Winners of these scholarships are selected without consideration of family financial circumstances, college choice, or major and career plans.”
D NMF has no corporate affiliation and will not be attending sponsoring University. She has reasonable stats in small fly over, non SAT state. She applied to schools with 35.0 ACT. 1520 PSAT SI 227, 1510 SAT (one time take) SI 227, Hopefully with similar accolades to other Students in this group.
Not very familiar w the difference in the scholarships but my son has been offered full NMS rides at UF, FSU, Clemson and Alabama. He is going to tour the Florida schools this week. Surprised he can get those but cannot get merit based aid at UNC.
Congrats! U of F is a school my D seriously considered. Most great schools don’t offer a lot of merit aid. The small national merit scholarship is given out ( I believe) to about 1/4 of the NMF students.
@RW1 2,500/15,000 = 1/6.
Are you looking for past stats (since this year’s $2500 winners haven’t been announced yet)? I think stats vary by state and theoretically, NMC looks at the whole package (essay, application, recommendation letter, grades, confirming score), so just GPA & confirming score probably won’t tell you much about your D’s chances.
It’s much easier to become semi finalist and finalist or scholar through a participating college or corporation but becoming a scholar on your own and actually getting money from national merit foundation itself is extremely difficult. From the limited data i’ve seen at my district during last 4-5 years, those students are flawlessly perfect and a make a very small exclusive group.
Along with being class Validectorian his scores are as close to perfect as you can get. Still up for a few big merit awards but was disappointed his favorite school did not offer him one. Ironically they want him for athletic team sport. He just had official visit this weekend. My advice is to go where you think you will be happy.
Thanks for you reply. I noticed you mentioned district, is there published data in past several years? D 4.0 uw (1 in class) 16 aps all 5s. 4yr allstate athlete ( 9 top 3, state finishes) 4 yr region champ in debate/ 1 time state champ, pub research and like many others the list goes on.
I think it’s prestigious, and it can be worth a lot of money if you attend certain colleges. I know students whose are getting an undergrad education completely free thanks to National Merit.
As for the $2500 NM scholarship, it is a one-time payment given freshman year. The NM folks will be looking at more than just a student’s academic record; the essay, volunteer work, part-time jobs, etc. all factor into the decision. The students who get corporate or college-sponsored scholarships are also considered National Merit Scholars.
@RW1 Vassar is a great school and have decent financial aid, congrats to your Daughter. I believe the majority of students that got the $2,500 must have a very good essay and special EC. It appears that many NMF are class Valedictorian as well, that just the nature of students with good stats. It could be luck as well, if most of the competitors with the same stats already got the scholarship from either corporate or colleges, then the pool will be smaller.
@RW1 – @Reebtoor has it almost exactly right. The actual chance is 2500/14,000 (18%), because they select the national winners in parallel with the corporate ones, so the around 1,000 kids receiving a corporate award aren’t actually competing for the national one. The school specific ones come later, after the national and corporate ones have been awarded.
Assuming you go to a big scholarship school, the national award does not prevent you from receiving the large supplemental award lots of folks on here are chasing, but it does supplant the small “official” award from the school, and is considered more prestigious (since only 18% of finalists receive one), and, ironically, valuable, even though it’s only a one-time $2500, because, as you already know, it can be used anywhere.
@Reebtoor is 1,000% correct about stats needed to win varying from state to state, because the national awards are distributed proportionally, just like semifinalists are, so it’s somewhat easier to win in a lower SI cutoff state than in a higher one.
I didn’t see any compiled data, just bio of students getting selected as scholars. There are so many factors including but not limited to grades, rank, rigor, AP, PSAT, SAT, SAT II, leadership, volunteerism, extracurriculars, character, research, arts, essays, teacher recommendations, principal/counselor recommendations, peer recommendations etc.
As foundation only picks 2,500 from whole country as the brightest high schoolers of the year, it’s not about the $ amount but about being recognised for your accomplishments. All of these schoolers can get free rides at at least 100 colleges or even more.
One of the common trait mentioned by guidance counsellors was perfect SAT score on one attempt and 5’s on all AP tests and all As in school on top of other academic and non academic accomplishments.
That’s one main difference between merit scholars and presidential scholars. Presidential scholarship picks your highest scores from all attempts at SAT and ACT.
He is very private about this whole process. I found out he was going to Morehead Cain interview the day before.
Found out about trip to Harvard and MIT 3 days before. The Clemson offer may not be for NMS. Sorry about that.
@Riversider There are about 2,500 NM Scholars, but there only about 500 students with perfect SAT scores overall, and some of those are not NMFs.
All NMFs scored top 1% in their state on PSAT, let us assume that most did the same in their SATs. The 2,500 Scholars are 16.67% of the finalists, and about the highest 0.17% of the entire set of SAT takers (assuming all finalists are in the top 1% of SAT). According to Prep Scholar’s high precision SAT distribution, that would include anybody with an SAT score of about 1560 or 1570 and above. That is assuming that the NM Foundations only uses SAT scores to determine whether a finalist is chosen as a scholar, and that all NMFs scored higher than 1500 on their SAT.
So I would actually think that, in most cases, they won’t differentiate between perfect SATs, unless there are so many finalists with perfect SATs in specific state that there are more students with perfect SATs than the number of NMF Scholar slots that are allocated to that state.