Reply to Which University did the National Merit finalists go to

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]A ranking of schools that don't specifically give scholarships to NMF students, particularly per capita, might be meaningful.  When listed with schools that are giving scholarships, it isn't very meaningful.[/quote]

+ 1 Took the words right out of my mouth! For instance, Vanderbilt, Emory, and Northeastern do; UVA, Michigan, ND do not. [/quote]

Pretty sure all these schools offer some form of very competitive academic scholarships for extraordinary students. And none of them are based on a PSAT score. You are spreading nonsense for whatever reason.

The national merit finalist distinction is not the cause of a scholarship at schools such as Vanderbilt, Emory, Michigan, UVA or Notre Dame. It might be one part of the entire application, but scholarships are awarded for a lot more than that. Whereas some schools like Alabama, UT-Dallas, Tulsa are gunning specifically for students with that award and awarding scholarships accordingly. And I say, great. Good for them.

If national merit finalists are reflective of the academic quality of a college's students, then the only measure that matters is the percentage of students with that distinction. So looking at the list, that would be MIT, Vanderbilt, Harvard, Stanford, USC, Yale, Princeton, Rice, Duke, Emory, Penn, Columbia, Dartmouth, Florida, and UT-Dallas, which are the only schools that have more than 4 percent of students with that distinction.

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Have you found a list that shows how many finalists?

I think there are three categories here.

1) Schools like Oklahoma and UTD that offer major scholarships linked to National Merit Finalist status.  At these schools, every finalist becomes a scholar, so the listed number of scholars is the same as the number of finalists.  Also, at these schools there may be a gap with a fairly high number of finalists, and then few kids who came close to but didn't quite make it.

2) Schools like Vanderbilt that offer a small scholarship.  While this scholarship probably isn't the reason why NMF's choose the school, it does mean that every Finalist becomes a scholar.  At these schools the NMS students are probably more representative of the larger population.

3) Schools like MIT that don't offer any scholarship.  At these schools the number of NMF's may be much higher than what is reported on that list, because there will be plenty of kids who didn't get a corporate or other scholarship.  [/quote]

There are no small scholarships at schools like Vanderbilt, Duke, Rice, Chicago, Northwestern. You either get a very difficult to get scholarship for the full ride, or you don't. What a lot of students get is financial aid. [/quote]

Vanderbilt gives $2K to $6K to every NMF who is accepted and chooses them.  This scholarship is specifically for NMF and receiving it makes one a NMS.  That is different from most or all the schools on your list.[/quote]

For schools charging nearly $100,000 per year, I'm pretty sure 2-6K doesn't make much of a difference. And from quickly glancing at the Vanderbilt website, that seems to be in addition to already winning a merit scholarship. A little bonus. [/quote]

Yes, I agree.  I was responding to someone who said that Vanderbilt doesn’t give small scholarships.

It says that if you are receiving another scholarship the NMS will add $2K.  If the NM scholarship can be up to $6K.

The point is that while this scholarship is indeed small relative to tuition, it means that every finalist at Vanderbilt becomes a scholar.  So the percent on the list above includes all the NMF’s at the school.[/quote]

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