The NSF GRFP also awards honorable mentions. Are there similar disparities in honorable mentions that there are for awards?
Spoiler alert: definitely.
Here are the raw numbers for honorable mentions per undergraduate institution. You can see that the Ivys really dominate here, and the underrepresentation of historically Black college and universities, and tribal colleges and universities, is even more pronounced than when we looked at award rates.
When we adjust by enrollment, it’s really clear that selective liberal arts colleges dominate honorable mentions.
Undergraduate endowment actually has a stronger effect for honorable mentions than it does for awards.
The Ivys also dominate honorable mentions per current institution.
You see the same pattern when controlling by enrollment; we can also see that California Institute of Technology is blowing everyone else out of the water.
The effect of current institutions’ endowment is stronger for honorable mentions than it was for awards, but is less strong than the effect of undergraduate institution endowment.