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PSAT National Merit Scholar Qualifying Scores for 2020, by State

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Update December 10, 2019. Note: Students who received their PSAT results in December 2018 are the NMS Class of 2020. Their qualifying selection index scores are listed below, per the Compassprep website. For students who took the test in October 2019 (NMS Class of 2021), selection index scores will not be available until September 2020.

The selection index score is the sum of your three PSAT scores, maximum of 228. The first score listed is for 2020; the second was the score required for the class of 2019; and the third is the score for the class of 2018.

Alabama 216, 216, 216
Alaska 213, 215, 217
Arizona 219, 220, 220
Arkansas 214, 214, 215
California 222, 223, 222
Colorado 220, 221, 220
Connecticut 221, 222, 221
Delaware 220, 222, 221
Dist Columbia 223, 223, 223
Florida 219, 219, 219
Georgia 220, 220, 220
Hawaii 219, 220, 220
Idaho 215, 214, 216
Illinois 221, 221, 221
Indiana 218, 219, 219
Iowa 215, 216, 216
Kansas 218, 218, 219
Kentucky 217, 218, 217
Louisiana 215, 217, 216
Maine 215, 217, 215
Maryland 222, 223, 222
Massachusetts 223, 223, 222
Michigan 219, 219, 219
Minnesota 219, 220, 220
Mississippi 214, 215, 213
Missouri 217, 217, 217
Montana 214, 214, 214
Nebraska 216, 216, 215
Nevada 218, 218, 217
New Hampshire 218, 219, 217
New Jersey 223, 223, 223
New Mexico 213, 215, 215
New York 221, 221, 221
North Carolina 219, 220, 219
North Dakota 212, 212, 211
Ohio 218, 219, 219
Oklahoma 214, 216
Oregon 220, 221, 220
Pennsylvania 220, 220, 220
Rhode Island 218, 220, 216
South Carolina 215, 216, 217
South Dakota 214, 215, 215
Tennessee 219, 219, 218
Texas 221, 221, 221
Utah 215, 215, 216
Vermont 216, 216, 217
Virginia 222, 222, 222
Washington 221, 222, 222
West Virginia 212, 212, 211
Wisconsin 216, 216, 217
Wyoming 212, 212, 213
Commended 212, 211, 209
Territories 212, 211, 209
International 223, 223, 223

To qualify for a National Merit Scholarship, the PSAT must be taken in the student’s junior year of high school. Many parents may not be aware that there is no single nationwide score on the PSAT that will qualify a student to become a NMS semifinalist, a critical preliminary step on the way to becoming a finalist and then perhaps a merit scholar.

Students are classified according to the state in which they attend high school, not the state of actual residence.

For more information about confirmation scores, please see PSAT Scoring and NMS (for a detailed explanation of scoring); The National Merit Journey: What You Need to Know, Part One; and The National Merit Journey Part Two: The Parent’s Role.

(See also Best Major Universities for National Merit Scholarship Funding and Merit Aid: Publics that Fund at least 50% of Tuition and Fees.)

Semifinalists emerge from the top 3-4% of students (50,000 or so) taking the test, by virtue of the PSAT score alone.  The top 3-4% of students earn “commended” status, and there is a national uniform score for commended students=209 for 2017.  (See below for SAT equivalent.) Semifinalists, on the other hand, account for fewer than 1% of all students, or about 16,000 nationwide.

From these students, the merit scholar foundation, using state allocation levels, selects about 15,000 to become finalists; and from this group, about 9,000 are actually selected as merit scholars, based on both PSAT and SAT scores and a letter of recommendation from the high school principal.  Therefore, many students who meet the semifinalist thresholds listed below do not go on to become finalists or merit scholars (two different things, though for some schools being a finalist is sufficient to earn support).  We speculate that meaningful improvement on the SAT, taken in the spring of the junior year, relative to the PSAT score from the preceding October, may help in identifying students who go beyond finalist status and become merit scholars.

Each state has its own threshold PSAT score, which is the baseline for students to be considered as semifinalists in a given state.  The scores vary widely for the NMS classof 2020, from 2012 in West Virginia to 223 in New Jersey.

Marshall Scholars 2014: Public University Honors Students Win 8 Awards

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Eleven of the 34 Marshall Scholars for 2014 are from public universities.  The Marshall Scholarship is one of the most prestigious in the world, providing full funding for two years of study at major universities in the United Kingdom.  At least eight of the 11 winners from state universities are enrolled in honors colleges or programs.  The most recent list is below:

Shama Ams – Saint John’s University
School of Oriental and African Studies

John ‘Russell’ Beaumont – University of Texas Austin, Plan II Honors/Architecture
University of Manchester

Alyssa Bilinski – Yale University
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Alexander Brammer – United States Military Academy
University of Oxford

Andrew Bulovsky – University of Wisconsin –Madison
London School of Economics and Political Science

Rhaina Cohen – Northwestern University
University of Oxford

Tantum Collins -Yale University
University of Oxford

Patrick Donnan – Auburn University, Honors College, Physics/Music
University of Oxford

Natalia Emanuel – Yale University
University of Oxford

Mailyn Fidler – Stanford University
University of Oxford

Chelsea Glenn – Northwestern University
University of Oxford

Bradford Hackert – United States Air Force Academy
King’s College London

Erin Hylton – University of Maryland – College Park Honors College (also winner of Udall and Boren awards)
Imperial College London

Wei Jia – Stanford University
University of Oxford

Catherine Koch – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Oxford

Dixon Li – Princeton University
Queen Mary, University of London

Brandon Liu – Harvard University
School of Oriental and African Studies

Colleen Loynachan – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Imperial College London

Matthew McMillan – Wheaton College
University of Cambridge

Ahmad Nasir – United States Military Academy
University of Oxford

Mike Norton – University of Arkansas – Fayetteville, Honors College
University of Oxford

Samantha Olyha – Cornell University
University of Oxford

Derek Park – Yale University
University of Oxford

Craig Pearson – Michigan State University, Honors College, also interviewed for a Rhodes Scholarship
University of Cambridge

Rebecca Peters – University of California – Berkeley (also a Truman Scholar in 2013)
University of Manchester

Joana Petrescu – Villanova University
University of Cambridge

Nicholas Picon – Georgia Institute of Technology, Aerospace Engineering
Cranfield University

Madeline Sands – Arizona State University, Barrett Honors College, Anthropology
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

Emily Shearer – Cornell University
University of Cambridge

Kirin Sinha – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Cambridge

Phillip Tucciarone – State University of New York – Buffalo, Honors College Chemical and Biological Engineering
University of Oxford

Jacob Wellman – University of New Mexico, Regents Scholar University Honors Program, Economics/Political Science
London School of Economics and Political Science

Anna Wherry – Johns Hopkins University
University of Oxford

Grace Young – Massachusetts Institute of Technology
University of Oxford

U at Buffalo Student Adds a Marshall Scholarship to His Goldwater Award

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Editor’s Note: The following post is by Marcene Robinson of the University at Buffalo.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Phillip Tucciarone, a University at Buffalo chemical and biological engineering student, has won a Marshall Scholarship, one of the most prestigious scholarships awarded annually to U.S. college students. 

Tucciarone is the first UB student to win a Marshall Scholarship since 1988 and is also a 2013 recipient of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship.

Up to 40 American students are awarded a Marshall Scholarship each year. 

The Marshall Scholarship will finance Tucciarone’s graduate study at a university in the United Kingdom, where he plans to study materials science.   Marshall Scholars now can be found among CEOs, Supreme Court justices, members of the U.S. Congress, Pulitzer Prize-winning authors and members of the U.S. Presidential Cabinet.

“This feels incredible and is a wonderful surprise, to be honest,” said Tucciarone, who will leave for London in September. “The award secures an exciting academic future for me over the next four years and makes a statement about the value of public higher education.”

A senior, Tucciarone is from Washingtonville in Orange County, N.Y., and is a graduate of Washingtonville High School.

The Marshall Scholarship is widely considered one of the most prestigious scholarships in the world, and works to strengthen the relationship between British and American citizens, and their governments and institutions. 

“The Marshall Scholarship is a mark of great distinction — these are not just some of the nation’s best and brightest young scholars, they are intellectually passionate, globally minded students dedicated to enriching the world around them,” said UB President Satish K. Tripathi. “This is exactly the kind of student that UB excels in educating.

Inspired by a desire to become a professor of materials science, Tucciarone will use the Marshall Scholarship to pursue a doctorate degree in materials science at either the University of Oxford or the Imperial College of London. He plans to join the groundbreaking research currently underway on graphene, one of the crystalline forms of carbon.

Graphene is considered the material of the future, Tucciarone said.  It has the potential to make electronics much faster, for example, and its most immediate use can be found in transistors, radio frequency devices and computer chips.

“If copper is your grandma’s Buick, then graphene is the new Ferrari,” he said.

Tucciarone has devoted much of his undergraduate research to nanomaterials and the development of methods of non-toxic bio-imaging, which play a role in cancer treatment. He has also co-authored and published two academic papers on his research in ACS Nano and Nano Letters, both monthly, peer-reviewed, scientific journals published by the American Chemical Society.

“In my 20-plus years teaching at UB, I’ve never seen such a display of leadership in one of my students,” says David Kofke, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering. “It is heartening to see this in an engineering student, where the workload promotes immersion in coursework without allowing time to take in the larger picture in life, let alone participate in it.”

A UB Honors College scholar, Tucciarone is president of the Honors Student Council, and works with inner city public schools through UB’s Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering Partnership, funded by the National Science Foundation, which seeks to improve science education in Buffalo Public Schools.

As a junior, he founded an annual volunteer service trip to the Dominican Republic through the Honors Student Council, where he and other UB students helped teach English to children.

Tucciarone said he was inspired to pursue a career in higher education by his experiences at UB, combined with his volunteer work in Buffalo Public Schools and the Dominican Republic.

“The faculty at UB is incredible,” said Tucciarone. “I never felt disconnected from them and they engaged me from day one in the classroom and as personal mentors.

“Education is the strongest mechanism for change in the world,” he added.  “I want to bridge the gap between the United States and U.K. as a diplomat, gain experience, and work as a bridge for bilateral research and higher education.”

Education and science are just a few of Tucciarone’s many passions. He is starting winger for UB’s rugby team, and hopes to play for the Oxford Blues, the University of Oxford’s rugby team, when he moves to England next fall.  A jazz enthusiast, Tucciarone played trombone and bass in a swing band, and bass in a blues/rock band, Blank Check, in Washingtonville.

The highly competitive Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship and Excellence in Education Program was founded in 1986 with the goal of alleviating the critical shortage of highly qualified scientists, mathematicians and engineers.

Clemson Calhoun Honors Student Combines Engineering with Global Studies

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Editor’s note: This post originally appeared on the Clemson website.

Civil engineering student Kate Gasparro has backpacked through Europe, studied abroad in Strasbourg, France, and helped build a schoolhouse in Nicaragua. Attending Clemson is the biggest part of what’s made those distant travels and many of the experiences that came before, during and after them possible

When Gasparro first began looking at colleges, she knew she wanted to pursue a degree that let her think big. As the daughter of two civil engineers, she also knew that a civil engineering program would help her do that: “Civil engineers are the ones who build the big things that we use everyday, and we make a difference,” she explains.

She visited 25 colleges before she landed at Clemson her senior year of high school. By the time she left Clemson’s campus, she knew she’d found her college home. Today, the Huntington Beach, California, native is only a semester away from graduating with a Clemson degree in civil engineering and a minor in international relations.

And just as she’d hoped, she’ll be leaving this place with a lot more than just a diploma in her hand. She’s moving forward with a portfolio of experience she can’t imagine having received anywhere else.

“It’s not about the name on the diploma. It’s about the experience you have there,” Gasparro offers. “Clemson helped me shape my future and where I want to go and who I want to be.”

The Calhoun Honors College has been an important part of that experience, with its small class sizes that allow personal, passionate and intellectual relationships with the University’s best and brightest, she says. For Gasparro, that meant spending her freshman year taking general engineering courses alongside honors classes, including a medieval history class with one of Clemson’s Harvard-educated professors. There, she and seven other students engaged in discussions about how war influences culture.

That same year, she and fewer than 10 other students studied Russian literature and philosophy as a part of the Dixon Fellow program, which “allows students to learn for the sake of learning,” Gasparro explains. “It expanded my own worldview and sparked my love of philosophy.”

Her Clemson experience has also meant getting involved in everything she wanted to be involved with. On the academic front, she is one of 12 Dixon Global Policy Scholars, a Coca-Cola Scholar and a member of the Omicron Delta Kappa leadership fraternity. She’s served as treasurer and Latin American project leader for Engineers Without Borders, as well as vice president of the Alpha Lambda Delta honor society. And she stays involved with a variety of student groups including the Clemson University Student Alumni Council, not to mention University tour guides, Tiger Band, symphonic band, orchestra and the Hillel Jewish Organization.

“Getting involved is a great way to meet these people and realize your own potential,” she says. “You feel such a greater tie to the University when you are involved, and it makes you be a better student because you can see the impact you make. You can tie your extracurricular experiences into your academic curriculum, making theory into practice and deepening your broader understanding.”

Even with all the accolades and experiences, Gasparro’s favorite thing about Clemson isn’t just one thing: it’s the people. Sure, the University’s president knows her by name, but so do countless other students, staff and faculty who share her appreciation for community, not to mention her love of Clemson.

“Clemson invests in people. You’re never just a number,” she explains. “They make that personal connection, and it’s all about that Clemson Family.”

Gasparro’s travels abroad have provided some of her most significant academic opportunities. As a Dixon Global Policy Scholar, she was able to complete a short-term study abroad in Strasbourg, where she met with officials from the European Union, Parliament and NATO to learn how international policy is made. After interacting with French and German students, she and some of her classmates backpacked throughout Europe, and during those travels she also completed course work in enlightenment philosophy and public policy.

Gasparro also joined Engineers Without Borders and started the student organization’s first Latin American project. Leading a group of six other students, she located a nonprofit already doing work in Nicaragua. They partnered with them in early September 2011, and a few months later, Clemson’s first Engineers Without Borders team traveled to the Central American country to lay the foundation for a schoolhouse there. She returned to the country again the summer before her senior year.

“I’ve learned what it means to partner with people who have a different culture and history, and work with them to construct something sustainable,” Gasparro says.

These days, she prides herself on being smiling, enthusiastic proof that a challenging degree doesn’t have to take away from the “college experience.”

“College is what you make of it,” Gasparro offers. “Being involved and in a challenging degree is all about time management and understanding your own abilities. Being able to relate your extracurricular experience to your classes and understanding the value in having both is key to making the most of your time.

“College is what you make of it. Why not make the most of those four years of your life?”

Determined to think big. Head on.

U.S. News: Major Public Universities with Highest Freshman Retention Rates

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Although the annual U.S. News college rankings are a cause of considerable controversy, the magazine is a source of excellent information.  One useful metric is that for freshman retention–the percentage of entering freshmen who return for the sophomore year.

The freshman retention rate can be somewhat misleading, however, because many of the leading universities also have the most selective admissions requirements, making academic success much more likely.  Another reason the rate can be misleading is that the nation’s elite private universities not only have the highest-qualified students, as measure by test scores and high school gpa’s, but also provide generous financial support that makes it unnecessary for students to work or drop out of school.

Yet this makes high freshman retention rates in public universities all the more impressive, especially when some of these schools achieve high retention rates even though they are not among the most selective in their admissions.  (This is especially so when tuition, fees, and cost of living are above average.)  Delaware, Michigan State, Penn State, Pitt, Ohio State, UC Santa Cruz, and Washington are examples.  Florida and Florida State also have impressive retention rates, but they also offer strong academics along with very low tuition costs.

Below please see the list of the public universities with the best freshman retention rates.  We will list the retention percentage, followed by the percentage of students accepted.

UC Berkeley–97% retention rate, 18% acceptance rate

UCLA–97% retention rate, 22% acceptance rate

North Carolina–97% retention rate, 28% acceptance rate

Virginia–97% retention rate, 30% acceptance rate

Florida–96% retention rate, 44% acceptance rate

Michigan–96% retention rate, 37% acceptance rate

William & Mary–95% retention rate, 32% acceptance rate

UC San Diego–95% retention rate, 38% acceptance rate

Georgia Tech–94% retention rate, 55% acceptance rate

UC Irvine–94% retention rate, 42% acceptance rate

Maryland–94% retention rate, 47% acceptance rate

Ohio State–93% retention rate, 64% acceptance rate

Connecticut–93% retention rate, 45% acceptance rate

Washington–93% retention rate, 59% acceptance rate

Florida State–92% retention rate, 54% acceptance rate

Penn State–92% retention rate, 54% acceptance rate

Rutgers–92% retention rate, 41% acceptance rate

Texas A&M–92% retention rate, 60% acceptance rate

Delaware–92% retention rate, 57%  acceptance rate

Pitt–92% retention rate, 56% acceptance rate

UT Austin–92% retention rate, 47% acceptance rate

Virginia Tech–92% retention rate, 70% acceptance rate

Binghamton–91% retention rate, 43% acceptance rate

Michigan State-91% retention rate, 71% acceptance rate

North Carolina State–91% retention rate, 50% acceptance rate

Clemson–90% retention rate, 58% acceptance rate

Stony Brook–90% retention rate, 42% acceptance rate

UC Santa Cruz–90% retention rate, 61% acceptance rate

Minnesota–90% retention rate, 50% acceptance rate

 

 

 

 

 

Rhodes Scholars 2014: UVA, Georgia Tech, UC Berkeley, Mississippi State, Tennessee, and Wisconsin Have Winners

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The latest list of Rhodes Scholars (awarded in November 2013 for the year 2014) includes six recipients from Harvard, three from Yale, and two from Princeton, giving the Ivy League 11 of the 32 awards won by American Students for 2014.  Rhodes awards for the year 2013 included 16 winners from Ivy schools.

The University of Virginia led public universities with two winners for 2014; UVA also had a Rhodes scholar in 2013.   Virginia and North Carolina are the leaders among all state universities in the number of Rhodes Scholars earned by their graduates.  Georgia Tech had one awardee in 2014 and one in 2013. 

Congratulations to Virginia winner Evan Behrle, a Jefferson Scholar and Charles S. Tyson, a Beinecke Scholar.  Also congratulations to Mississippi State scholar Donald Mayfield Brown, whose senior thesis was on novelist Ralph Ellison.   Drew A. Birrenkott of the University of Wisconsin was previously a Goldwater Scholar.  Lindsay A. Lee of the University of Tennessee was diagnosed at age 3 with muscular dystrophy.  She plans to use her mathematics modeling to promote equal access to health care for all.  Melissa L. McCoy graduated summa cum laude in chemical engineering from Georgia Tech.  Zarko Perovic of UC Berkeley graduated in the top 5 in his class.  Growing up in Serbia, he witnessed firsthand the horror of war crimes, and his research will be directed at making it more feasible for victims to document atrocities.

The most prestigious academic award in the world, Rhodes Scholarships fund two or three years of study at Oxford;  at total of 838 students applied this year.  The approximate yearly value of a Rhodes Scholarship is $50,000.  Increasingly, it appears, the awards are going to students at elite private schools and the service academies, despite some relatively good showings by public universities in recent years.

The U.S. Military Academy at West Point had two winners for 2014. Last year, West Point and Annapolis each had one Rhodes scholar.  Stanford also had two.

Additional state university leaders throughout the history of  Rhodes Scholarships are Washington, Wisconsin, Oklahoma, UT Austin, Kansas, Mississippi, Arizona, Georgia, and Nebraska.

Rhodes winners are chosen after district-level interviews.  At the end of this post are the 32 winners for 2014, by district.

There are 16 districts:

2013 Districts

Please be aware that there may be changes in interview locations and the states grouped within Districts from year to year.

District 1 – New York, NY
(Maine, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Vermont)

District 2 – Boston, MA
(Connecticut, Massachusetts)

District 3 – New York, NY
(New York)

District 4 – Philadelphia, PA
(Delaware, Pennsylvania, West Virginia)

District 5 – Washington, DC
(Maryland/DC, North Carolina)

District 6 – Atlanta, GA
(Georgia, Virginia)

District 7 – Birmingham, AL
(Alabama, Florida, Tennessee)

District 8 – Houston, TX
(Louisiana, Oklahoma, Texas)

District 9 – Indianapolis, IN
(Indiana, Kentucky, Ohio)

District 10 – Chicago, IL
(Illinois, Michigan)

District 11 – Chicago, IL
(Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin)

District 12 – St. Louis, MO
(Arkansas, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, South Carolina)

District 13 – Colorado Springs, CO
(Colorado, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah)

District 14 – Seattle, WA
(Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon, Washington, Wyoming)

District 15 – San Francisco, CA
(California-North, Arizona, Nevada)

District 16 – Los Angeles, CA
(California-South, Hawaii)

Rhodes winners are chosen after district-level interviews.  Here are the 32 winners for 2014, by district.

District 1:

Jessica Wamala, Milford, N.H., Villanova University

Alexander Joel Diaz, North Bergen, N.J., Harvard University

District 2:

Elizabeth Hockfield Byrne, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University

Katherine Elida Warren, Bainbridge Island, Wash., Harvard University

District 3:

Isabel Emma Eggleston Beshar, Rye, N.Y., Yale University

Paolo Poggioni Singer, Bronx, N.Y., Harvard University

District 4:

Evan Barrett Behrle, Oxford, Penn., University of Virginia

Alexander Gerard Wang, Doylestown, Penn., New York University, Abu Dhabi

District 5:

Timothy Michael McGinnis, Charlotte, N.C., Princeton University

Charles Samuel Tyson, Chapel Hill, N.C. University of Virginia

District 6:

Brian Westfall McGrail, Arlington, Va., Williams College

Emma Pierson, Arlington, Va., Stanford University

District 7:

James O’Connell, Tampa, Fla., Wake Forest University

Lindsay Evans Lee, Oak Ridge, Tenn., University of Tennessee, Knoxville

District 8:

Melissa Loreice McCoy, Dallas, Texas, Georgia Institute of Technology

John Mikhael, Dallas, Texas, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

District 9:

Adam Mastroianni, Monroeville, Ohio, Princeton University

Courtney Wittekind, Mason, Ohio, Carnegie Mellon University

District 10:

Vinay Nayak, Oak Brook, Ill., Yale University

Calla Glavin, Birmingham, Mich., United States Military Academy

District 11:

Drew Alan Birrenkott, McFarland, Wisc., University of Wisconsin

Samuel Martin Greene, Spring Green, Wisc., University of Chicago

District 12:

Donald Mayfield Brown, Vicksburg, Miss., Mississippi State University

Joshua Allen Aiken, Eugene, Ore., Washington University, St. Louis

District 13:

Meredith Lukens Wheeler, Fort Collins, Colo., Stanford University

Erin Alexandra Tanith Mauldin, Albuquerque, N.M., United States Military Academy

District 14:

Suzanna Marie Fritzberg, Lake Forest Park, Wash., Yale University

Andrew Scott Lea, Richland, Wash., Harvard University

District 15:

Miles William Unterreiner, Santa Barbara, Calif., Stanford University

Clarke Knight, Henderson, Nev., Smith College

District 16:

Aurora Catherine Griffin, Westlake Village, Calif., Harvard University

Zarko Perovic, San Diego, Calif., University of California, Berkeley

Surprise: Public Universities Have the Best Academic Departments

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We have completed an analysis of academic departmental rankings published by U.S. News, and one result may be a surprise: of the top 56 universities with the best academic departments, 34 are public.   After the top dozen or so universities, including familiar names such as Princeton, Harvard, Stanford, and Yale, the list is dominated by public institutions.

Part of the reason is that the public universities below are leading research institutions, while a few of the elite private schools that show up in the top 25 of the U.S. News rankings are not really research-intensive.  Examples are Dartmouth, Georgetown, and Notre Dame.  Yet most of the other elite private schools do have a research focus along with many respected graduate courses of study.

Prospective honors students, more than most other students who are considering college, should pay close attention to the rankings of the academic departments in the schools they are considering.  Why do we believe that this is so?

1.  As the somewhat surprising departmental statistics below demonstrate, some of the strongest academic departments in the nation are at public research universities, where the disadvantages of large schools are mitigated by offering honors students relatively small honors communities and classes.

2. Conventional national college rankings often emphasize financial resources, selectivity, small class size, and graduation rates to the point that the actual quality of academic departments can be obscured.  But public university honors students typically have smaller classes and much higher graduation rates than those for the university as a whole.

3. Honors students interested in post-graduate research options should know that there is a strong correlation between highly-rated academic departments and the number of National Science Graduate Research Grants as well as the number of Fulbright Student awards.  Both of these awards are allied with careers in research and academe.

4.  Strong academic departments and an emphasis on undergraduate research, which is often a component of honors programs, also promotes high achievement in earning undergraduate awards, such as Goldwater scholarships.

Having listed the points we above, we also advise prospective honors students to ask honors staff about the reach of the honors curriculum and whether the best professors in strong academic departments are available to teach at least upper-division honors sections.

The departmental rankings below may include up to 15 departments from each university: undergraduate business, undergraduate engineering, and graduate rankings for biological sciences, chemistry, computer science, earth science, economics, education, English, history, math, physics, political science, psychology, and sociology.

Universities whose stats do not include all 15 of the departments above may not do so because (1) they might not offer undergraduate or graduate degrees in the subject (e.g., business, education, engineering); or (2) the ranking of the department is in the lower third of the rankings and are not listed at all.

On the left is the cumulative ranking of academic departments, by institution.  Next we list the number of departments included in the analysis.  Then the actual rating is listed, with, for example, the 2.71 rating for Stanford indicating that of the 14 ranked departments, the overall average was 2.71 on a scale of 1 to 200, with 1 being the best national ranking a department can receive.  Thus the “average” department at Stanford is in the top 3 nationally.  The final listing is the 2014 U.S. News rank of the university as a whole.  Please note that if you are a student of the U.S. News rankings, the cumulative academic department rating is not the same as the “peer assessment” used in the rankings, though there is some correlation.  Public universities are in bold type.

 Dept Rank                   #Depts        Rating                 US News                     

1-Stanford

14

2.71

5

2-UC Berkeley

15

3.13

20

3-MIT

12

4.58

7

4-Harvard

14

5.57

2

5-Caltech

8

5.63

10

6-Princeton

13

5.77

.

1

7-Michigan

15

9.47

28

8-Columbia

13

10.85

4

9-Cornell

14

11.64

16

10-Chicago

12

11.92

5

11-Yale

13

12.00

3

12-Wisconsin

15

12.73

41

13-UCLA

14

12.86

23

14-UT-Austin

15

14.27

52

15-Penn

15

18.53

7

16-Northwestern

14

19.00

12

17-Illinois

15

19.33

41

18-Johns Hopkins

14

19.36

12

19-Washington

15

21.67

52

20-Duke

13

22.38

7

21-Minnesota

15

23.07

69

22-UC San Diego

14

23.29

39

23-Ohio State

15

25.47

52

24-North Carolina

15

25.80

30

25-Penn State

15

25.93

37

26-Brown

13

27.08

14

27-Maryland

15

27.40

62

28-Indiana

14

29.07

75

29-Wash U

13

29.08

14

30-UC Davis

14

30.57

39

31-Virginia

15

32.47

23

32-Georgia Tech

9

32.78

36

33-Emory

11

33.00

20

34-Vanderbilt

14

33.29

17

35-Rice

12

33.83

18

36-UC Irvine

13

34.31

49

37-UC Santa Barb

14

35.64

41

38-Colorado

15

37.00

86

39–USC

15

37.73

23

40-Arizona

15

38.20

119

41-Purdue

15

40.33

68

42-Dartmouth

8

42.75

10

43-Michigan State

15

43.20

73

44-Texas A&M

15

43.80

69

45-Rutgers

15

43.87

63

46-Florida

15

44.00

49

47-Pitt

15

46.00

62

48-Iowa

15

46.93

73

49-Stony Brook

14

47.08

82

50-Arizona State

15

47.27

142

51-Oregon

14

49.36

109

52-Massachusetts

14

52.14

91

53-Notre Dame

13

52.23

18

54-Virginia Tech

12

57.58

69

55-Illinois Chicago

15

58.07

128

56-Georgetown

6

59.33

20

Auburn Honors College Student Wins Marshall Scholarship

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Editor’s Note: The following post is from the OANews…

Auburn University senior Patrick Donnan has been named a recipient of the prestigious Marshall Scholarship, becoming one of only 40 U.S. students selected to attend their choice of university in the United Kingdom.

“We are very proud of Patrick, both for his accomplishments at Auburn and for his being named a Marshall Scholar,” said Melissa Baumann, Auburn University assistant provost and director of the Honors College. “He has displayed great leadership in the classroom and the laboratory and in advancing science in the community.”

Auburn native Donnan, who has a 3.98 grade-point average, is a student in the Honors College double-majoring in physics and music, concentrating on the bassoon, and minoring in mathematics. He is also a 2013 Barry M. Goldwater Scholar and is a Rhodes Scholar finalist this year.

“I am truly humbled,” Donnan said. “Receiving the Marshall Scholarship is the culmination of all the work that my professors and Honors College staff have invested in me these past three years at Auburn. Even if I did not receive the award, going through the application process was beneficial in itself as it helped me grow as a person.

“I am looking forward to continuing my research in theoretical physics at Oxford and becoming a good ambassador for the United States and Auburn while abroad.”

Donnan conducts research in Auburn’s College of Sciences and Mathematics as a member of the theoretical and computational atomic physics group. He is an editor of the Auburn University Journal of Undergraduate Studies and has co-authored four peer-reviewed publications, one of which was published in Nature: The International Weekly Journal of Science.

“Patrick embodies a near ideal example of balance. He is an accomplished musician and an accomplished young scientist,” said Professor Ed Thomas, the Lawrence C. Wit Professor in the College of Sciences and Mathematics and one of Donnan’s research professors. “He has found a way to blend both of his passions into a seamless whole. Patrick not only has talent, but he has the dedication and self-awareness to put forth the effort and hard work to allow those talents to mature.”

Paul Harris, associate director for national prestigious scholarships in the Honors College, said, “I thoroughly enjoyed working with Patrick throughout the application process. He represents the very best of Auburn University and his generation. As a double major in physics and music, he is not only bright and intellectually engaging, but he also gives generously of his time and talents whether promoting research among his fellow physics majors or sharing his love for music as a member of the Auburn symphonic band.

The Marshall Scholarship program was established in 1953 by an act of British Parliament in honor of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall as an expression of Britain’s gratitude for economic assistance received through the Marshall Plan after World War II. The program is overseen by the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission. Approximately 900 students are endorsed annually for the scholarship by their respective universities, for which 40 scholarships are awarded nationwide.

Schreyer Honors College: A Parent’s Perspective

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Tracy Riegel is the parent of two Penn State students and a contributor to the We Admit blog, from which the following post is taken. Tracy and her husband, Rick, are both Penn State alumni and members of the the Penn State Parents Program. As Penn State’s Schreyer Honors College releases its decisions today, Tracy shares her thoughts on the program:

I remember this time last year when my daughter Meghan was eagerly waiting for decisions from several private schools — one Ivy League school, one out-of-state school, and Schreyer Honors College. Needless to say, it was an anxious time for her and certainly one of self-reflection. After many years of studying, test taking, paper writing, SATs, AP tests, and countless other activities it all came down to this moment.

Like you, we had many discussions about the pros and cons of the various schools where she applied. We talked about courses, academic resources, campus life, opportunities to learn beyond the classroom, where could she see herself living, cost, value —it was a long list. Finally, decisions arrived and she was accepted to several of her choices, including the Ivy. She ultimately chose to attend Penn State and the Schreyer Honors College. Why? Here are just a few of the reasons:

  1. Only 300 students in each class (approximately), which was appealing to my daughter to be in such a selective group.
  2. Strong faculty advising.
  3. The honors curriculum covers all majors.
  4. Opportunities to take part in leadership development activities specifically for Schreyer scholars.
  5. The Schreyer Ambassador Travel Grant, which provides financial assistance for about 200 students per year to pursue education, research, service, or study abroad.
  6. A number of new service and leadership initiatives that are now underway domestically and internationally.
  7. Guaranteed housing in the center of campus.
  8. Donuts with Dean Brady — an opportunity to meet with the dean in an informal setting.
  9. SHO Time first year orientation and the opportunity to be an orientation leader as an upperclassman.
  10. Preferred scheduling for classes. Your student will not have to enroll in the last section available, which is usually at 8 a.m.!

I’m sure there are many more personal reasons why students would choose the Schreyer Honors College. Meghan felt that it was a good way to make a large university smaller. She is able to take advantage of all the Penn State has to offer as well as those opportunities within Schreyer. I won’t kid you, the classes are hard (just hearing her talk about her math and physics classes made my head spin!) and time management is key. She is hoping to be accepted as a research assistant this summer on campus with a professor, is currently tutoring for a physics class, and is involved in the THON organization Atlas. She hopes to go to Singapore in May for two weeks for a class, and help with SHO Time orientation next fall.

Meghan made the right choice for herself and for her education. She had many opportunities and chose Schreyer Honors College.

Arkansas Honors College Alum Wins Marshall Scholarship

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Michael Norton, an alumnus of the honors college at the University of Arkansas, has won a Marshall Scholarship to study political science at Oxford University.  Norton also earned a Truman Scholarship in 2012, and he is going to interview for a Rhodes Scholarship in the near future.  New rules allow winners of the Marshall to go forward with other interviews.

Already in an elite group for having won a Marshall and a Truman scholarship, Norton would be in super-elite company if he were to add a Rhodes Scholarship.

UA senior Rachael Pelligrino will also interview for a Rhodes Scholarship.  In addition, she is a finalist for a Truman Scholarship.

Norton will become the 7th UA winner of a Marshall Scholarship.  The scholarships provide full funding for academic and living expenses for two years of study at any university in the United Kingdom.  Most winners choose Oxford, Cambridge, University College London, King’s College of London, the London School of Economics, or Imperial College of London.

Norton told the Arkansas Traveler that the UofA Office of Nationally Competitive Awards was central to the development of his successful application.

“The office is a great treasure of the university when it comes to these awards,” he said.  Suzanne McCray of that office is known for her mock “interviews.”

The Marshall Scholarship was established in 1953. It awards up to 40 American students each year.  For the 2013 year, 943 students applied for the scholarship and 34 were selected.