^ I agree with much of the above. I’m just not sure what the dispute seems to be about, or who exactly is painting “too rosy a picture”; presumably it is me, since I am cited. There was never any suggestion in my post that any of the competitive merit scholarships are “likely”, though I suggested that the OP should be competitive; and I suggested applying to these schools only AFTER applying to a group of schools where the OP’s admission, as well as the funding for her education, would be “assured”, not just “hoped for”.
Obviously, none of the competitive merit scholarships are “assured” in any sense, and counting on them as such would be folly. That doesn’t mean that one shouldn’t be aware of them, especially as many of the schools on the OP’s list do have such scholarships. Some have to be applied for. No one is a shoo-in for these scholarships, but that doesn’t mean that they aren’t a possibility. The lottery analogy is only partly correct - the majority of applications do not have any kind of a shot at these scholarships, and the group of applicants who will be competitive for them is considerably smaller than the general pool.
If @menloparkmom, @sybbie719 and @scotlandcalling are emphasizing that these options should not be relied on and that the OP should first have a strategy with focuses on admission to schools with automatic merit aid, I completely agree (as I stated in my post above). If the suggestion is that the OP shouldn’t even consider their existence, or should avoid applying to these schools, then I don’t agree at all.