Drawing Top Students

Baylor ranks 26th nationally with 84 National Merit Scholars in this year's freshman class, up two spots from a year ago, according to numbers detailed in January by The Chronicle of Higher Education.
Baylor came in ahead of half the Ivy League (Brown, Columbia, Cornell and Dartmouth) as well as other prestigious private schools such as Notre Dame, Emory, Boston University, Tulane, Miami and Georgetown.
Baylor ranked fourth among Big 12 Conference schools, behind only the much larger state universities of Texas, Texas A&M and Oklahoma, and outranked other public schools such as Michigan, UC-Berkeley, Clemson, LSU, Maryland, Virginia, Wisconsin, UCLA and Georgia. 
Each fall, Baylor invites National Merit Semifinalists to a special program called Invitation to Excellence where they can learn about the school. National Merit Finalists who list Baylor as their top college choice are eligible for the Regents' Scholarship, which covers full tuition costs for eight semesters.