<p>It’s not 100 percent but not offering merit has a strong association with high rank.</p>
<p>True…and that’s generally because most/all of their students have very high stats…so who gets the merit?? lol </p>
<p>That said, sometimes top schools WILL award merit to target some kids that help them with ethnic diversity or regional diversity. Schools like to say that they have kids from all 50 states and they like to have a good number of URMs for diversity sake.</p>