Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 11:57     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….


Omg, I have a likely NMSF and I am not at all she can even get into UVA!


Same. If our daughter had guaranteed admission to UMD we’d take it and skip the whole process.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 11:44     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The reality is MIT attracts and admits the truly brilliant kids, not the ones that had to be prepped and ground to dust to achieve the top test scores/gpa. There's a huge difference between these types of people, even if every parent thinks their kid is special, they're not.


What? The kids admitted to MIT at DC's school prepped their @sses off from the time they were small. Highly intelligent sure, but total grinders.


sure but that's not true for all.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 11:17     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….


Do you have data to back up that assertion? UVA has less than 1% receiving a National Merit Scholarship, because they don't give out National Merit Scholarships. That doesn't mean they have less than 1% NMSF's.

Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 11:11     Subject: Re:Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
DD NMF chose Yale.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 11:08     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….


Omg, I have a likely NMSF and I am not at all she can even get into UVA!
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:56     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:It depends on your high school. My kid was one of about 145 at TJ, so they weren't all going to Harvard. They got an email telling them to hurry up and collect their envelope from the transcript window - that was their congratulations.

Other schools where nmsfs aren't common had cake, balloons and a picture in the newspaper.


Same. The local newspaper listed them but you had to scroll and scroll to see all the names. Not remarkable for the high school. It is remarkable for the nation. There are fewer than 5,000 SAT test takers who scored above 1580 in the entire world.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:51     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:1. Alabama 323 [8,279 Freshmen, 3.9%]
2. Florida 297 [6,612 Freshmen 4.4%]
3. USC 262 [3,402 Freshmen, 7.7%]
4. Purdue 260 [9,353 Freshmen, 2.7%]
5. UT Dallas 232 [4,218 Freshmen, 5.5%]
6. Texas A&M 219 [12,419 Freshmen, 1.7%]
7. Vanderbilt 185 [1,624 Freshmen, 11.3%]
8. Harvard 160 [1,644 Freshmen, 9.7%]
9. MIT 154 [1,136 Freshmen, 13.5%]
10. Penn 147 [2,415 Freshmen, 6%]
11. UMD 144 [5,821 Freshmen, 2.5%]
12. Stanford 129 [1,733 Freshmen, 7.4%]
13. Yale 127 [1,554 Freshmen, 8%]
14. Princeton 116 [1,497 Freshmen, 7.7%]
15. Northeastern 97 [2,519 Freshmen, 3.9%]
16. Duke 94 [1,744 Freshmen, 5.3%]
17. UC Berkeley 93 [6,707 Freshmen, 1.4%]
18. Georgia Tech 90 [3,646 Freshmen, 2.5%]
19. UCF 85 [7,512 Freshmen, 1.1%]
20. UT Austin 85 [9,109 Freshmen, .9%]
21. Oklahoma 84
22. Minnesota 79
23. BU 77 [3,635 Freshmen, 2.1%]
24. UCLA 77 [6,461 Freshmen, 1.2%]
25. USF 77 [6,773 Freshmen, 1.1%]
26. Michigan 76 [7,050 Freshmen, 1%]
27. Columbia 75 [1,522 Freshmen, 4.9%]
28. Northwestern 75 [2,038 Freshmen, 3.7%]
29. Brown 69 [1,717 Freshmen, 4%]
30. Emory 67 [1,424 Freshmen, 4.7%]
31. Indiana 67 [9,736 Freshmen, .7%]
32. Arizona 65 [9,069 Freshmen, .7%]
33. Tufts 63 [1,694 Freshmen, 3.7%]
34. ASU 62 [10,022 Freshmen, .6%]
35. Georgia 60 [6,250 Freshmen, 1%]
36. BYU 59 [5,567 Freshmen, 1%]
37. Georgetown 56 [1,603 Freshmen, 3.5%]
38. Case Western 55 [1,553 Freshmen, 3.5%]
39. Cornell 54 [3,491 Freshmen, 1.5%]
40. Rice 51 [1,201 Freshmen, 4.3%]
41. Dartmouth 49 [1,124 Freshmen, 4.4%]
42. Michigan State 49 [9,829 Freshmen .5%]
43. Johns Hopkins 48 [1,406 Freshmen 3.4%]
44. UChicago 48 [2,053 Freshmen, 2.3%]
45. Carnegie Mellon 47 [1,716 Freshmen, 2.7%]
46. Clemson 45 [4,588 Freshmen, .99%]
47. Missouri 45 [4,983 Freshmen, .9%]
48. NYU 44 [6,184 Freshmen, .7%]
49. Miss State 43 [3,367 Freshmen, 1.2%]
50. Rutgers 43 [7,780 Freshmen, .5%]
51. UNC 40 [4,689 Freshmen, .8%]
52. Illinois 39 [8,297 Freshmen, .5%]
53. Oklahoma State 36 [4,643 Freshmen, .7%]
54. Iowa State 35
55. UVA 35 [4,020 Freshmen, .9%]


Are these NMSF's, NMF's, or people who get National Merit Scholarships?

Schools like UTD give a "National Merit Scholarship" to every NMF they admit. So, if 5.5% of the student body has a National Merit Scholarship then you can assume that 5.5% has PSAT scores that qualify them. On the other hand, a school like Penn doesn't give any merit scholarships, so in addition to the 6% NMS's, they also have some unknown number of students who were finalists but didn't win an external scholarship.

I'm not saying that UTD isn't a great school or that your high scoring kid won't find a peer group there. I'm just providing some context for this list.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:40     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
It depends on your high school. My kid was one of about 145 at TJ, so they weren't all going to Harvard. They got an email telling them to hurry up and collect their envelope from the transcript window - that was their congratulations.

Other schools where nmsfs aren't common had cake, balloons and a picture in the newspaper.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:30     Subject: Re:Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Many of the very smart kids are solely taking the ACT now. So they aren’t prepped or care at all about PSAT. It’s optional now at our private.


The ACT is easier. Admissions knows that.



Only slightly. A 36 ACT converts to a 1590 SAT. My NMSF kid realized he could score a 36 in one sitting with no prep other than a single practice test. Why worry about the SAT in a new format when they could just do that?
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:29     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….



+1. The snobbiness is strong with this one
The walls of your bubble are quite thick, aren’t they?
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:28     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:Which university did the National Merit finalists go to and why


Bucknell.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:28     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:The reality is MIT attracts and admits the truly brilliant kids, not the ones that had to be prepped and ground to dust to achieve the top test scores/gpa. There's a huge difference between these types of people, even if every parent thinks their kid is special, they're not.


What? The kids admitted to MIT at DC's school prepped their @sses off from the time they were small. Highly intelligent sure, but total grinders.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:25     Subject: Re:Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:Many of the very smart kids are solely taking the ACT now. So they aren’t prepped or care at all about PSAT. It’s optional now at our private.


Great. Not the thread for you then. That’s ok. Not everything is about you.
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:24     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….


The walls of your bubble are quite thick, aren’t they?
Anonymous
Post 05/11/2025 10:23     Subject: Which University did the National Merit finalists go to
Anonymous wrote:The top schools don’t have a monopoly on talent.


No one denies that there is a small number of sharp cookies who enroll - to their own detriment? - at public universities but that would be a needle in the haystack situation (UVA , for example , has less than 1% NMSF students)….

Environment matters a lot and plethora of mediocrity can pull the top ones down….