How important is National Merit for top schools?

So I just took my PSAT today but with a bit of a special case. Normally for standardized tests like the ACT, SAT etc. I get extended time. The people in my counseling office,however, messed up and gave me accomodations for the SAT, ones I didn’t need a matter of fact. I still did pretty well but I didn’t do national merit well I feel because of the mishap. I’ll likely cancel and try alternate entry because PSAT told me I could. I’m going to try and prepare for the test this time. So, a few questions. If I don’t end up making it, how much do top schools really care? I know a lot of people that go to them have them but it is it sligjtly detrimental to not have it. I’d still like the scholarship anyway but i’d hope it’s not something that sets me back. One other questions is how does the alternate entry work? Do they convert my SAT into PSAT?

Colleges disclose their selection criteria in their Common Data Sets. This allows you to see a list of what matters to each college.

For example, U of Chicago:

http://www.collegedata.com/cs/data/college/college_pg02_tmpl.jhtml?schoolId=327

As you can see, the criteria they list as “very important” are academic rigor, recommendations, essay, talent, and character.

Only schools that are trying to climb the ranks and give merit scholarships really care about NMF. The selective ones that don’t give merit aid don’t care anout NMF, because if they favored all the NMF who applied, the schools would not achieve their diversity quotas.

No schools care about actual PSAT scores.