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@Philovitist: Geography? Is that what NMS is all about? If that’s what it is, let’s change the name of the competition to reflect it, e.g., the California State Merit Scholar competition, the North Dakota State Merit Scholar contest, etc. But then the scholarship would lose the cachet of the “national” moniker, wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>In its current incarnation, the NMS competition attempts to “spread the wealth” artificially across the entire U.S. The fact of the matter is that educational resources (quality of teaching, opportunities, funding for teachers, after-school tutoring) are not evenly distributed across the country, within a given state, within a city/town, or even within a specific school.
If the point is to “reward merit in the context of one person’s education resources,” a far more compelling argument can be made for using socioeconomic status to stratify NMSF cut-offs.</p>