Merit scholarships will generally mean aiming lower on the college selectivity scale. For the larger merit scholarships, that may mean looking mostly at colleges that may be low match, likely, or safety for admission, but with the understanding that they could really be reaches for the large-enough merit scholarships.
Are the boarding school college counselors knowledgeable with assessing chances for merit scholarships, or are they mostly used to dealing with students from wealthy families who are only concerned about admission, rather than merit scholarships?
Being in Pennsylvania is particularly difficult for college affordability.