<p>If your pen name indicates your college preferences, you can forget about merit scholarships. The “Ivy” schools don’t give them.</p>
<p>There are numerous highlighted threads that deal with merit scholarships. Some of them are at the top of the parents forum.</p>
<p>Some–there are many others–of the good schools that give some competitive merit awards are Rice, Wash U. St. Louis, Univ. of Chicago, Vanderbilt, Emory…</p>
<p>By the way, Duke is a private school. As with all private schools, there is no distinction between in-state and out-of-state, although there may be some use of merit scholarships to provide geographic diversity.</p>