NYU Withdraws from National Merit Scholarship

New York University has become the latest in a movement of colleges to withdraw its support of the National Merit Scholarship Corp. Founded in 1955, National Merit funds scholarships for students who receive high scores on the PSAT and SAT, an amount that exceeded $50 million in the 2009-2010 year. With its exit, NYU firmly expressed its stance toward the use of standardized tests as a means of locating the most academically qualified students: “We simply do not feel that enrolling a larger number of National Merit finalists is a necessary way for us to attract the most academically qualified freshman class.”

In a time when colleges are becoming more deliberate regarding the use of financial-aid dollars, this and a slew of other issues surrounding the National Merit comes as a setback to one of the largest scholarship program across the United States. Could other national colleges and universities soon follow this trend?