My son went to a suburban high school and graduated with a 4.0/4.7 GPA, perfect ACT, perfect SAT2 tests and a ton of AP 5 credits and solid but not above average EC. He received a partial freshman engineering merit award for one year. He entered with over 60 hours of credits, took an impressive course load, aced all his first year with an A+ in classes where it was offered and received a much smaller continuing merit award for next year. This year, my daughter was offered a little more merit aid and a research grant in a less competitive major. She had over 3.9/4.3 GPA and 32 ACT along with excellent leadership EC. They had no hooks or financial need.
We are aware of a number of people who received larger or 4-year merit awards even with lower objective grades and scores, but all had non-academic hooks of some type. So, if you don’t have anything amazing but academics going for you, I wouldn’t count on merit aid and would consider it a bonus if you receive an award, especially if you are out of state. If you have impressive athletics, minority status, significant financial need, amazing subjective EC/essay or something, that may be much more important than objective academic numbers from many comments I’ve seen and received. If you are applying to an over subscribed major like some in Engineering or Business, it’s even more difficult. Being a major donor or connected probably doesn’t hurt either, given previous admissions scandals. Good luck!