<p>In my day, NMF was a big, big deal. The scholarship money pretty much paid a year’s tuition. The dollar amount has stayed the same but college costs have skyrocketed to the point that the scholarship just covers some kids’ books. Sad.</p>
<p>Also many more colleges would supplement the NMF scholarship so that kids got full rides at schools like Duke, Hopkins, to name a few. Now there are not that many schools that do this. The auto awards are much scarcer, though there are still some out there. I guess the colleges did not like the way the NMS were chosen, either, and are using their own criteria to pick those students to whom they want to award scholarships, and National Merit has just become a line entry on the awards section of the apps for the most part. Still those who make finalist, have the high SAT scores that colleges want and on which most base merit awards, </p>
<p>In a sense the National Merit state by state distribution is very valid, since those states where there are fewer high flying candidates may have geographics on their side for getting merit awards. I have seen that happen with some NE colleges that are working at being more national. Getting into BC from the NE is more difficult than if you come from underrepresented parts of the country. Brown U has out and out said, that it is tougher for those living in the NYC area, Boston area to gain admissions because there are so many apps from there. Instead of doing a lottery pull of one of those kids, if there is an app from Alaska or Idaho, they will snap that up for admissions. Not saying, the chosen student is necessarily not has outstanding as the batch from the NE, but he would stand out because of where he lives and not be in the stack that has to somehow be whittled down in size.</p>