mflevity

Yeah. It's important to distinguish between actual National Merit Scholars and National Merit Finalists, as there are far more Finalists. Since "National Merit Scholar" is used rather ambiguously in many cases, some statistics can be misleading.

collegehelp

The numbers in my list refer to Merit Scholar "awardees". This is what the NMS organization calls them. i.e. winners, recipients, not finalists

icy9ff8

About 93% of National Merit Semi-Finalists become National Merit Finalists. Basically they wait for confirmation of the high PSAT score by a reasonably high SAT I score. Along with decent recs. and an essay.

mflevity

@collegehelp: I figured, since there are, what, about 2000 or so actual awardees?

However, I know that several colleges (Carleton, for instance) will grant National Merit-based scholarships to Finalists, as well.

hawkette

Here is the data for the Top 50 National Universities and the Top 20 LACs based on a per capita measurement, ie, % of National Merit Scholars in a class at X college.

Rank , % of class , School
1 , 20.9% , Rice
2 , 17.0% , Harvard
3 , 16.7% , Caltech
4 , 16.3% , U Chicago
5 , 15.0% , Princeton
6 , 13.7% , Yale
7 , 13.4% , MIT
8 , 12.2% , Northwestern
9 , 11.0% , Wash U
10 , 10.8% , Vanderbilt
11 , 10.2% , Stanford
12 , 9.1% , U Tulsa
13 , 9.0% , U Missouri (Rolla)
14 , 5.7% , Duke
15 , 5.5% , USC
16 , 5.3% , Brown
17 , 5.0% , Dartmouth
18 , 4.7% , U Penn
19 , 4.7% , Columbia
20 , 4.7% , Tufts
21 , 3.9% , U North Carolina
22 , 3.8% , Case Western
23 , 3.6% , Emory
24 , 3.6% , Brandeis
25 , 3.5% , U Oklahoma
26 , 3.2% , Georgia Tech
27 , 3.1% , U Texas
28 , 3.0% , NYU
29 , 2.8% , Baylor
30 , 2.6% , U Rochester
31 , 2.3% , Georgetown
32 , 2.2% , Notre Dame
33 , 2.2% , Carnegie Mellon
34 , 2.1% , Johns Hopkins
35 , 1.9% , Texas A&M
36 , 1.9% , U Florida
37 , 1.8% , Samford
38 , 1.7% , SMU
39 , 1.6% , Rensselaer
40 , 1.5% , U Alabama
41 , 1.5% , U Nebraska
42 , 1.5% , Worcester
43 , 1.4% , Arizona State
44 , 1.4% , Clemson
45 , 1.4% , Cornell
46 , 1.4% , Tulane
47 , 1.3% , Fordham
48 , 1.2% , Ohio State
49 , 1.2% , U Minnesota
50 , 1.2% , BYU


Rank , % of class , School
1 , 38.9% , Harvey Mudd
2 , 16.8% , Carleton
3 , 8.6% , Grinnell
4 , 7.5% , Oberlin
5 , 6.7% , Bowdoin
6 , 6.2% , Pomona
7 , 5.7% , W&L
8 , 5.4% , Swarthmore
9 , 4.4% , Williams
10 , 4.2% , Claremont McK
11 , 4.1% , Amherst
12 , 2.7% , Middlebury
13 , 2.2% , Davidson
14 , 1.7% , Haverford
15 , 1.6% , Wellesley
16 , 1.5% , Hamilton
17 , 0.9% , Wesleyan
18 , 0.7% , Vassar
19 , 0.6% , Smith
20 , 0.3% , Colgate
21 , 0.2% , Colby

icy9ff8

I am not certain that I understand what percentages are detailed in these charts. Is this the percentage of the 2,000 NMS that matriculated at a particular college or university? Or is this the percentage of NMS students in a first year class at a particular college or university? To illustrate my question: If 200 of the 2,000 NMS matriculated at Northwestern University, then the % is 10%. But if the chart illustrates that the 200 NMS who matriculated at NU joined a freshman class of 1,800, then the percent of the freshman class at Northwestern, for example, is 11.11%. Also, what are the number of NMSF, NMF & NMS for a particular year?

hawkette

I calculated this as a percentage of an entire class of estimated size and how many NMS a student is likely to encounter over 4 years at college (thus taking into account transfers though not taking into account if NMS students transfers in or out ). I took the undergraduate enrollment numbers from collegeboard.com, divided by four and got the estimated class size. I then divided the # of NMS matriculates by this estimated class size.

For example, for Northwestern:

Undergrad enrollment is 8153. 25% of that is 2038 students. 249 National Merit Scholars went there in Fall, 2007 so these 249 represent 12.2% of the average class size.

arcadia

While it is interesting to compare numbers on NMS at different schools, it should not serve as an indicator of a school's overall quality. The main reason I say this is because a number of schools on this list offer scholarships to NMS, while others do not. Schools that offer NMS scholarships tend to have a much higher percentage of NMS, all else being equal.

icy9ff8

Arcadia: I think that the original poster (OP) addressed your concern in the initial list posted based on NMS who were not sponsored by the school attended. I somewhat disagree with the above post as the number of NMS on a campus can be an indication of academic quality at a particular institution. But CollegeHelp's initial list was brilliant in a subtle sort of way, and was intended to be used as one factor in measuring academic quality at these schools. Also it is not clear as to how much scholarship money is given by a particular school to a NMS student.

hawkette

arcadia,
There are approximately 14,000 National Merit Finalists and all of the colleges have the option to participate in the sponsorship of these students. Those colleges that chose to sponsor students certainly should not be penalized for making the effort to attract these top students.

Some colleges will use merit aid and scholarships such as NMS to attract those students; some colleges will not. But the bottom line is where do these top students end up and I certainly don't think you penalize schools like Rice, Northwestern and others that clearly attracted a lot of very talented students with this program.

An analogy might be the free agent baseball player market where all of the major league teams can bid for a player's services, but not all choose to. As a result, the star player has to decide where to sign and play. Teams that spend the money to attract the stars should be recognized for their efforts as ultimately this leads to a stronger team.

Sam Lee

hawkette,

i think you should exclude those sponsored by schools. i like how including them makes my school look good but i've asked around before and i found that the fair way to compare is to exclude them. even if you disagree with me on this, can you generate a list excluding college sponsored NMS? thanks!

hawkette

Sam Lee,
I had done this for a subset of the overall group (the USNWR Top 30 National Universities). Here are those results measured both by 1. Number of NMS Scholars only and 2. Number of NMS Scholars including sponsored students.

I also divided them into sub-groups where there seem to be natural breaks in the numbers:

Rank, , NMS Scholars , % of entering freshmen , College

1 , 285 , 17% , Harvard
2 , 36 , 17% , Caltech
3 , 179 , 15% , Princeton
4 , 183 , 14% , Yale
5 , 138 , 13% , MIT

6 , 164 , 10% , Stanford
7 , 64 , 8.4% , Rice
8 , 90 , 5.7% , Duke
9 , 80 , 5.3% , Brown
10 , 51 , 5.0% , Dartmouth
11 , 62 , 4.7% , Columbia
12 , 115 , 4.7% , U Penn

13 , 56 , 3.5% , Vanderbilt
14 , 40 , 3.3% , U Chicago
15 , 63 , 3.1% , Northwestern
16 , 50 , 2.7% , Wash U
17 , 46 , 2.2% , Notre Dame
18 , 40 , 2.3% , Georgetown
19 , 31 , 2.2% , Carnegie Mellon
20 , 24 , 2.1% , Johns Hopkins

21 , 47 , 1.4% , Cornell
22 , 16 , 1.3% , Tufts
23 , 20 , 1.2% , Emory
24 , 60 , 1.0% , UC Berkeley
25 , 38 , 1.0% , U Virginia
26 , 62 , 1.0% , U Michigan
27 , 36 , 0.9% , USC
28 , 39 , 0.9% , U North Carolina
29 , 6 , 0.6% , Wake Forest
30 , 28 , 0.4% , UCLA


Rank, , NMS Scholars including sponsored students , % of entering freshmen , College

1 , 159 , 20.9% , Rice
2 , 285 , 17.0% , Harvard
3 , 36 , 16.7% , Caltech
4 , 196 , 16.3% , U Chicago
5 , 179 , 15.0% , Princeton

6 , 183 , 13.7% , Yale
7 , 138 , 13.4% , MIT
8 , 249 , 12.2% , Northwestern
9 , 204 , 11.0% , Wash U
10 , 172 , 10.8% , Vanderbilt
11 , 164 , 10.2% , Stanford

12 , 90 , 5.7% , Duke
13 , 231 , 5.5% , USC
14 , 80 , 5.3% , Brown
15 , 51 , 5.0% , Dartmouth
16 , 62 , 4.7% , Columbia
17 , 115 , 4.7% , U Penn
18 , 59 , 4.7% , Tufts
19 , 166 , 3.9% , U North Carolina
20 , 60 , 3.6% , Emory

21 , 40 , 2.3% , Georgetown
22 , 46 , 2.2% , Notre Dame
23 , 31 , 2.2% , Carnegie Mellon
24 , 24 , 2.1% , Johns Hopkins
25 , 47 , 1.4% , Cornell
26 , 60 , 1.0% , UC Berkeley
27 , 38 , 1.0% , U Virginia
28 , 62 , 1.0% , U Michigan
29 , 10 , 0.9% , Wake Forest
30 , 28 , 0.4% , UCLA

Sam Lee

thanks hawkette,

your list #1 is what i'd expect based on SAT average. generous merit-aid program of certain schools give them extra edge, but as a whole, it correlates with SAT average fairly well.

mochamaven

um, icy, the reason UT and some other schools have more NM students than other more "prestigious" schools is that in the first column, you see the number of NM scholars who won their $2500 through the National Merit corporation itself. Then in the third column you see the number of National Merit finalists who didn't get the $2500 scholarship but were then awarded money from the school they decided to attend. If UT hadn't given them money, they wouldn't have been national merit scholars.

hawkette

mochamaven,
I understand your point, but let's not forget the pool of students that we are talking about. There are 14,000 National Merit finalists. I hope you will agree that the great majority of these are pretty strong candidates that any college would like to enroll. Ideally, I'd love to know where all 14,000 are, but since that is not available, the NMS data with and without the college-sponsored scholarships are the next best thing. All of these colleges have the option to sponsor students if they chose and I applaud those that do because this is rewarding more of these high achieving students for what they have done. Furthermore, these numbers don't account for any other element of financial assistance (merit aid or otherwise) that likely varies from college to college. My conclusion is that the purist (who likely is part of the historical status quo) might like the NMS-declared winners only, but I think the efforts of the college-sponsoring schools to recruit these top students should be recognized as a net positive that improves their student body profile.