@homerdog they have a link on their website and you just fill out some forms about your stats - transcript, scores, intended major, race etc. They don’t ask for anything else however like volunteer work, jobs, special talents or awards, which can be significant. They review the submission and give you an early read of potential merit (they also do the same for financial aid) so you know before you decide to apply ED.
Without that tool we would have applied blindly to ED and hoped for the best but now that we have been told that our daughter isn’t a merit candidate it does give us pause because she’s likely to get merit at several other schools that are not much further down the US News list from Oberlin as well as a higher ranked NESCAC school (our alma mater) that doesn’t offer merit. Like I said above, I find the whole merit thing confusing given that several people from the RD list got in off the wait list and were awarded merit money so I’m guessing they offer it to increase yield and don’t feel compelled to do that as much with a student applying ED.