<p>It’s a private company distributing scholarship money in the way they see fit. Part of the metric that NMSC uses to determine the selection index number for each state is to make sure that the percentage of NMSF for each state compared to the national total is roughly equivalent to the percentage of HS graduates for each state compared to the national total (that’s why they don’t just announce who’s a NMSF at the same time they send letters to the top 50,000; they wait till after June so they have current national & state graduation numbers.) </p>
<p>If they changed to the top 16,000 scorers in the entire US, there are probably a few states that would have zero recipients and then the argument would be that it’s not a “National” award then either as certain states wouldn’t be represented. And the vast majority would be from NY, NJ, TX and CA. Companies & universities located in lower scoring states would have less incentive to be NSF sponsors if their local constituents wouldn’t have a chance of making the cut.</p>