Who Gives National Merit Scholarships?

A relatively few of the 8,262 National Merit Scholar finalists from the class of 2007 will receive scholarships offered by the National Merit Corporation and other sponsoring corporations. The vast majority of scholarships are awarded by participating universities. The schools with highest number of finalist enrolled are listed below. The number shown in parenthesis ( ) indicates how many of these national merit scholarships were paid by the universities.

The top five universities with most enrollees for the 2007-08 school year:
Harvard University 285 (0)
University of Texas at Austin 283 (232)
Northwestern University 249 (186)
University of Southern California 231 (195)
Washington University of St. Louis 204 (154)

Other California universities enrolling more than twenty finalists:
Stanford University 164 (0)
Harvey Mudd College 68 (52)
University of California, Berkeley 60 (0)
Cal Tech 36 (0)
UCLA 28 (0)

Ten additional universities awarding National Merit Scholarships:
University of Chicago 196 (156)
University of Oklahoma 175 (137)
Texas A & M at College Station 173 (134)
Vanderbilt University 172 (116)
University of Florida 168 (132)
North Carolina at Chapel Hill 166 (127)
New York University 159 (137)
Rice University 159 (95)
Arizona State University 150 (127)
The Ohio State University 118 (93)

Figures provided by National Merit Scholarship Corporation