Anonymous wrote:The Merit Award is in effect a tuition discount. Almost all schools offer some kind of tuition discount, which is subsidized by the school's endowment. Typically the larger the endowment the larger discount (or Merit Award). Federal law now requires a net price calculator on most school web sites. You can input your financials and your child's grades and scores and get some idea (not entirely accurate, just an idea) of what the actual cost would be. Sorry this post turned into a treatise on financial aid. Hope it's helpful.
Merit aid is without regard to financial need. Financial aid is related to financial need. The OP asked about merit aid rather than financial aid. While there are certainly schools that provide merit aid to attract desireable students, it is not all schools to all students (at least based on our experience with a student currently in college who was offered merit aid by one school but not the one s/he is attending).