<p>Re: 439, you’re right, I had that part wrong. I always forget about the corporate-sponsored scholarships. I guess because my kids could never get any of them.</p>
<p>The rest of it was still right though, I think. To put more teeth in #437, I just took a look.</p>
<p>Nearly two thirds of Cornell undergrads come from just seven states. I will list them, together with the latest NMS cutoff score I just found, all for the same year.
New York - 219; New Jersey - 224; California - 223; Pennsylvania - 217; Massachusetts -224; Maryland- 223; and Texas - 219.</p>
<p>The cutoff for Oklahoma for the same year was 210.</p>
<p>I’m pretty sure there are a large number of students attending Cornell who were not NMS semi-finalists, but would have been if they’d lived in Oklahoma. And if they’d lived in Oklahoma and decided to attend U Oklahoma they would have magically become “National Merit Scholars”. The same kids, with the same scores. With the different result merely because of what state they lived in, and what university they chose to attend.</p>