<p>Wis75, my explanation in Post #10 does indeed make sense and you seem to have understood at least part of it – that there are many NMS that choose to go to the Ivies and other private schools that do not sponsor NM scholarships. The other part of my post was in reference to Posts #3 and #4 that stated NMS = NMF enrolled, which is NOT true at all schools. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that just over half of the NM Finalists ever become NM Scholars, because there are roughly 15,000 NMF and only 8,500 NMS. And out of the 8500 NM scholarships, over 4900 are sponsored by individual colleges and they can be used only at that college. There are roughly 1250 corporate-sponsored NM scholarships (most of which are restricted to children of employees) and the remaining 2350 are those one-time $2500 payments from NMSC; the money awarded in these two categories can usually be used at ANY school. </p>
<p>There are indeed schools that “buy” NMS by sponsoring such scholarships and those schools make up over half of the total NM scholarships awarded. You can easily tell which ones those are by looking at the MNSC Annual Report. For example, at Ball State University, 12 of the 13 NMS were sponsored by the school itself (which automatically elevated those 12 NMF to NMS) and only one NMS attending Ball State won the direct award from NMSC or a corporate scholarship. On the other hand, Harvard had 266 NMS and every one of them became a NMS without Harvard doing anything, because they had a direct award or a corporate award. </p>
<p>In my opinion, far too much weight is given to NM status. All it says is how a person did on one 2-hour test taken on one particular day. I personally know at least a dozen top students – including a valedictorian – who had an “off” day and did not score high enough to make the cut for semi-finalist in their state and therefore were not eligible for any kind of NM scholarship. I also know a few “slackers” with good but not great GPAs who become NM semifinalists just because they were great test takers.</p>