I’m not sure if this is true at many/all schools, but our experience might be relevant to the question of merit versus need-based aid at NYU (ie @halflokum’s discussion). For the past two years both of our kids have received very large named scholarships at Northwestern. Both got fancy letters about the huge honor in receiving the talent/merit award and each involved an upscale dinner and ceremony, plus the letter specifically stated the award was based on their special talents (one in MT and one in science), which they both absolutely do possess, and should be included in their resumes.
Taken at face value, we could easily construe these as pure talent/merit awards, and in a sense they are, but we assume from our D’s first two years (full tuition) that as soon as we are back to paying tuition for only our S that somehow his scholarship-worthy talent will magically disappear.
So in some cases people may believe an award is talent/merit based, but there may also be a need-based criteria underlying eligibility.