Is it uncommon for schools to give more aid/merit to a student they really want?

The practice of giving better “need-based” financial aid offers to students that the school really wants is sometimes called “preferential packaging”. It is basically a hidden merit scholarship.

However, it seems unlikely that Stanford does that. As noted above, Stanford has unusually good financial aid in general (not sure about Williams, but you can use net price calculators on hypothetical situations to see).