I agree that merit is all about test scores (or 90%). However, every year there are more and more schools going test optional. For those schools, why not just put on the website “if you want to be considered for merit, you must submit test scores”. I haven’t seen that in too many places.
Let’s not pretend that the merit or financial aid process is completely transparent. Many NPC calculators are out of date, clunky (use only top line info), or use old tuition rates. NPCs require GPA input. Why not remove this? If GPAs are meaningless, lets remove this from the NPC.